


i got soul, but i'm not a soldier

by neura_sthenic



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bigotry & Prejudice, Bisexual Character, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Friendship/Love, M/M, Past Underage, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:05:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 50,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7714264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neura_sthenic/pseuds/neura_sthenic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best of us can find happiness in misery.</p><p>(AU where Nick submits to his bullies.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Zootopia belongs to Disney. I cite from the film briefly at intervals (mostly in early chapters) and reference some unused designs from _The Art of Zootopia_ (especially Nick's clothes).
> 
> Title cribbed from "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers. Summary line from "I Don't Care" by Fall Out Boy. 
> 
> Over the course of the story, I also cite from/ paraphrase some poems, including "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts" and "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" by Wallace Stevens, "The Thought-Fox" by Ted Hughes, and "Casabianca" by Elizabeth Bishop. Japanese _kitsune_ lore is endlessly fascinating; you'll notice I've incorporated a little here and there.

She was suspicious the moment she saw it. Glossy as a crow, deceptively sleek for its size, the Boarsche was parked at a bad angle in the only disabled parking space that street. She hopped closer, rounding past blackened windows that cast back the streets.

No plate, no placard. 

Judy's nose flared as she tapped out a ticket. Abuse, she thought. Abuse abuse. Vaguely she became aware of someone murmuring about ice cream, _better not have forgotten my order_ , but the sounds were drowned out by the storm in her own head.

She was somewhere between frowning and smirking, sliding the ticket _ever_ -so-smoothly behind the windshield wiper, when she heard it. A gravelly sound, like stones grinding in an electrified mill.

A car window.

"Paws off my car!" shouted a male voice.

Hot asphalt met her feet; there was an answering spring in her knees. The hat had to go, she thought, hating the sound and feel of canvas rasping as her ears moved.

"Did she just ticket the car? She ticketed the car. Can you believe this?"

The voice was coming from the back seat, she realized, and also: she'd have to stand on her toes to look inside.

Her nose started twitching. 

Stop it, she thought, advancing towards the window with her lips pressing together like an iron to cloth. She knew the twitching was her tell and yet she couldn't stop it.

"Unbelievable. They really are letting the force go to the dogs," she heard, and the annoyance that had been simmering in her all day began to cook. 

Like a surging bubble, she rose to her toes.

The car-owner was a heavy-set marmot. Judy had never seen one look so livid. His incisors were out and he seemed to think she was wood for him to whittle.

"Sir," she said over his loud protests. 

"You're a disgrace," he told her as she explained the rules and the hundred-dollar fine.

His incisors blinked in the sun, yellow with plaque like they'd been glazed in an oven. The sheen to them made her feel unclean. When she looked at his eyes, it was to see rings of gold shrinking behind pupils that seemed like stand-ins for a bruised ego.

"Are you blind as well as stupid?" he said when she'd finished. "We have _every_ right to be here. Come closer, Nicky."

Shoot, thought Judy, for—she hadn't seen the fox.

Big and red and male and she hadn't smelled him. The tail as large as she was, curled into the space beside the marmot like a charmed snake—she hadn't seen it. Those skull-sized paws, lustrous as bitumen, and the thought of what a causal swipe could inflict.

Her heart hammered at the door of memory.

The marmot gestured at the fox, and she saw great pyramid ears, all sooty tips and sandy centers, folding back like traps. 

"See this?" said the marmot.

Judy couldn't see the eyes she knew were vertical yellow slits: sunglasses concealed them. Sunglasses, she realized, with rims of horn. _Real_ horn, which wasn't illegal, plenty of mammals donated their horns, only you had to be filthy rich and possibly a psychopath to wear them, and now all she could see was that _muzzle_.

Elongated, she thought, like a scabbard to all those canines and carnassials. For an actual death-trap, it seemed mockingly ironic that the coloring was less red than cream.

"Nicky here is blind," the marmot was saying. "To put it in terms you'll understand, meter-maid: We. Can. Park. Here."

With the marmot in her face, the fox became a mental image. She frowned, because now she was processing details. 

Those giant paws? She could swear they'd been trembling. 

That powerful memory, that icon of fear—

She peered past the marmot and confirmed: no, it wasn't Gideon. This was a little fox by comparison, hollow-cheeked, gaunt, even in a black suit and tie. A sick fox? she wondered, noting the paws, certain now they were trembling, not flexing for attack.

A slender fox in an expensive suit, sitting peacefully next to prey. Next to the owner of a luxury car. 

Next to a friend.

The fox was sick and blind and its pyramid ears were practically caving in from embarrassment. And she'd _assumed_ —

The marmot was saying something else about a misunderstanding. Judy's ears were burning at the roots.

And the fox lifted its muzzle, its gaze a tad off-center, and she just knew shame, because he _was_ blind. An errant ray of sunlight slid past the fur like water, highlighting gold in the red. He didn't show a tooth as he said, "So sorry for the trouble, Officer."

His voice was soft and almost lovely, in the way of sad things. A smile followed, soft and sad and lovely beyond endurance.

"No, no, _I'm_ sorry," said Judy, already backing away, ears stiff as planks of kevlar and delivering hard knocks to her head. 

"Yeah, I thought so," said the marmot. "Thanks for nothing."

Later it would occur to her that she should have asked to see an actual permit. In the moment, however, shame was her guide and her conscience. 

The marmot sniffed as she removed the ticket. "What a joke," he muttered before the car window slid shut.

Through metal and glass, she heard him say, "This is what happens when you don't do as I say, Nicky."

This did not precisely make sense, but Judy did not wait to hear the fox's response, so eager was she to put space between them. A jingle from a nearby storefront, and she saw a hippopotamus leaving an ice-cream café with a cake box as large as his belly. He wore a valet's uniform.

She didn't look back as the car started behind her, tugging instead at her vest, hoping it would hide the canister on her belt. A blur of black and exhaust heat passed her by, and realization hit again: the fox was blind.

*

The fox was standing on the steps of what Zoogle Maps told her was Moose Capital. She knew it was him from the hollow cheeks and tailored suit. There was a quaver to his paw in its hold on a crooked cigarette. 

She watched him breathe ash. Watched him eye a line of lemmings in their business best as they exchanged cash for pawpsicles with a coyote and his toddler son. Watched his lips curl with amusement, the black slick against cream.

There was _no way_ he was blind.

"Hey, Nicky!" she shouted.

As the fox turned, his muzzle flashed red. 

Judy felt herself freeze, but managed to overcome the hitch with a burst of speed. A forceful leap, and she was at spitting distance.

"You _lied_ to me!" she said.

The fox snorted and took a long drag from his cigarette. His tail drifted lazily over the steps, like it couldn't be bothered to take her seriously. 

His eyes, she noted, were green.

Green, and it was hard not to associate him with those uncanny nights. Stories of ghosts and moon-beasts, of magic and seduction and cruelty. Jade-eyed foxes who dug up graves and put skulls on their heads, tucked their tails away, and appeared soft and beautiful to the unsuspecting.

She stomped up the steps and was only three beneath him when he exhaled. Canines flashed, and it hit her: beneath the stink of tar, his cologne, heavy and overpowering.

It was like being touched.

Right here was close enough, she decided, and then was infuriated with herself for her fear. She stabbed a finger towards him, livid with them both. "You _liar_!"

"Oh?" said the fox with a sly smile, with shapeshifter eyes. "Sure you don't mean someone else?" 

He touched the cigarette to his lips, still smiling, then slipped it into his mouth and inhaled.

She couldn't believe she'd been fooled into thinking him sad or _lovely_. He was a bone-fide scoundrel. " _You_ committed parking abuse!"

" _I_ can't even drive," he said, and aimed a billow of smoke directly at her nose. 

Judy coughed. And coughed. Her mouth felt violated.

She sputtered to recovery. "That's not—you pretended to be _blind_!"

"You know, in a way, everyone's blind," he said, appearing almost contemplative behind the dissipating smoke. 

At her expression, his brows rose and his smile grew wide. "That's right. If I remember correctly, _you_ were blindly fooled by appearances."

His tail swished to the side, curling past his feet over the steps.

She felt the threat to her space, and the desire to kick and run; instead, her foot began to thump. "So you do admit—"

" _I'm_ not the liar, sweetheart."

"Do _not_ call me 'sweetheart'."

His smile closed over teeth like pitch. "Have it your way, darling," he said, dropping the cigarette and extinguishing it with a foot. 

"Wow, guess everything I suspected about hedge funds is true," she said. "Testosterone and egos and lies, lies, lies. Insidious plans to destroy families, to destroy lives—all you guys really care about is yourselves, I suppose."

Gotcha, she thought, for his tail had sunk, then lurched like a ship losing control to waves.

Under her smile, though, his eyes remained fixed in a half-lidded glare. "Look, meter-maid, I'm pretty sure I haven't committed a crime. So why don't you hop along, maybe find some other fox to harass, hm?"

"I do _not_ profile foxes," she said, ignoring the canister on her belt. She'd never actually _use_ it, so it wasn't actually an issue.

Even so, she could hear the affectation in her voice. For all that he was a shapeshifter and a scoundrel and a lurching, sinking ship, the accusation still stung. 

She lowered her gaze, pretending to look at where she was fishing for the slip of paper in her vest. 

She'd been planning to keep it as a reminder. Now she thrust it at the chest of the very animal she'd wanted to remember, hoping it would serve as a reminder to _him_.

"Here," she said. "For your friend. If he has a grievance, he can contest the citation in traffic court."

The fox eyed the ticket with a—to her gaze, alarming—wrinkle in his snout. But she held unwavering, her stance daring him not to comply, and his expression smoothed with the sudden give of dough rolled under a thick pin. 

As he moved to accept the ticket, that _scent_ broke over her again: clean notes of cologne, saturated with cigarette, all harsh and thick enough to taste. Only later would it occur to her that he didn't smell like Gideon—like fox.

"You have a name?" he said, pocketing the ticket with distaste. 

She stood up straight, making sure to meet his eyes with her own. "My name is _Officer_ Hopps, Officer Judy Hopps."

He snorted, like she'd tried out for a role and he thought she was the worst candidate he'd ever seen.

"Accessible parking abuse is a serious offense," she said, deciding it was best just to ignore the disrespect. She'd managed to right a wrong, after all. That counted as a victory! "Don't let me catch you at it again, Mr.—?"

"Wilde," he said, and she caught a flash of annoyance crossing his face, like he'd revealed more than intended.

With his paws squashed in his pockets, his tail on edge, those ears at half-mast, she could see she'd made an impression. She felt her own smile, the first real satisfaction since she'd put on the vest that morning. "Well. Until next time, Mr. Wilde."

"Pretty sure there won't be a next time," he called, but she already had her back to him and was heading for her vehicle and didn't care.


	2. Chapter 2

Her only lead in the Otterton case was the pawpsicle-selling coyote, and he apparently didn't work the same beat on Wednesdays. 

"You're wasting your time," said a familiar sing-song. 

Caught in the act of thumping her foot on an empty sidewalk, she felt her heart lurch. Like a wind-up toy falling off a shelf, she spun without a sense of balance.

Wilde and his smirk had taken refuge on the steps of what she now knew was the delivery entrance to Moose Capital. He was wearing the kind of suit she'd always envied men being able to wear, all crisp edges and boyish lines. He nursed a cigarette with paws dark as a chimney in winter. 

Pacing in her loud and smelly apartment only the night before last, Judy had come up with more than fifty snappy things to say if she ever ran into Wilde again. She hadn't expected to run into him _this soon_.

Her mind went blank.

"What do you mean?" she heard herself say.

He glanced to where the coyote and his son were supposed to be selling their wares. Expelled a plume of smoke with lips puckering into a smile. 

Judy squinted at him, then decided this conversation wasn't actionable at a distance. A breath for composure, two robust hops, and—she stood at the base of the steps.

"Oh," he said, eyes opening wide. 

She blinked, because he couldn't possibly be surprised to see her.

"Were you waiting for me to answer that?" No sooner than he'd said the words, and his expression hardened, eyes half-lidded with what she could only describe as schadenfreude. "Sorry, I kinda figured _you_ were the detective here."

As she trained her gaze onto him, silently daring him to meet her eyes with his own, to own up to being a _sleazeball_ , she thought she saw him swallow. Less confident than he projected, she thought. 

It made her wonder.

Wilde was no stranger to fraud. Did he know something about the coyote that she didn't? 

Maybe, she thought, maybe the pawpsicle gig wasn't completely legal. It had seemed like too pathetic an operation to be an actual con. But appearances, she was coming to learn, could be deceiving.

"I'm so glad you know that coyote," she said, braving the first of the steps. "He's my only lead in a _very_ important case."

A flick of that tail, so long it could serve her as a noose. "What happened, Officer Hippity-Hop? Someone steal a traffic cone?"

Wilde's sneer expressed the depths of his contempt for her and her life choices, but Judy wasn't going to let him get to her. In fact, she thought, seeing the tremble in his paws. In _fact_ , she thought again, and felt her ears perk. 

There was something to his meanness. Something that made her think he wasn't just attacking _her_.

Something she thought she could use.

"Ha ha, hilarious," she said, letting some smugness into her act. "Can you tell his name or whereabouts?"

Wilde's mouth stretched into the smirk of someone with the upper paw. "Rabbit, I know everyone."

Tail wagging with what could only be mockery, he tossed the cigarette to the step above hers. Probably daring her to cite him for littering. As Judy lifted a foot to extinguish the still-smoking butt, he grinned as though she'd fallen for a trap.

"I also know that _you_ should get back to the battery company before they start looking for their mascot."

She saw him trying to make it to the door, but too slow and too late.

"Not so fast, _Nicky_ ," she said. Later, she'd congratulate herself for making her voice sound sufficiently threatening.

"So sorry, very important meeting to attend. Sayonara, I had the blast-iest of blasts—"

But she'd already vaulted into his atmosphere of cologne and ash, Otterton's picture centered over her chest like a shield.

Curiosity made him look. And when he looked, he froze.

"Emmitt Otterton," he said, and she'd honestly not expected to hear that name, let alone to see Wilde's muzzle tighten—his eyes, wide open and searching, turning to her for answers. "He's missing?"

"For two weeks now," she said, still flabbergasted. "You-you really know him?"

He leaned in as if to better see the picture. There was so little space between them now, she could see the stubble—thorny as nettles—from where he plucked the whiskers from his muzzle. Her heart picked up speed, but it wasn't from fear. 

She'd _known_ she was onto something.

When he stood back, his expression was as pinched as if he'd been wearing clothespins on his nose. "Emmitt's the best florist on this side of town," he said, voice equally pinched. "Who else is looking for him?"

She explained.

"What?" and his insulted expression _insulted her_. "Why isn't a real cop on the case?"

"You're gonna want to take that back," she said, so angry she felt her fur rising, her ears twisting backward like snapped rope. "I _am_ a real cop, and I am _going_ to solve this case—"

"Okay, Carrots, I get it," said Wilde, holding up a paw like the thick skin on the pads was supposed to teach her some kind of lesson.

Fury ached. "And just 'cause a pampered _jerk_ like you doesn't have a first idea about _justice_ or—"

"I _said_ , I get it."

"—or _honesty_ or _hard work_ and sacrifice doesn't mean the _rest_ of us should give up on what _matters_!"

The effort of getting the words out left her heaving. It took her a moment to parse his expression. 

Green was to her the color of meals and evenings, of nights made spooky with stories. And from this moment on, it was also the color of Wilde's hostility. Red coat, green mind, white teeth, she thought. The very opposite of peaceful, and she almost couldn't blame him.

She'd gone overboard, she realized. There was heat crawling up the base of her skull, akin to her sense of shame. As _sick_ and _tired_ as she was of being taken for lesser, she thought, it was also her job not to show it. She cringed within herself, ever critical of her own weakness.

And the marrow of Wilde's bones, she imagined it _seethed_ with venom. His tail had bristled into a dragon, twice his size and ready to draw flame from ash. His claws were out like spikes sprung from the ribbed ceiling of a dungeon. 

But much as he seemed to want to lash out, something—a tick in his snout—held him in check. Somehow, that tick also told her she was safe.

And as she watched, his tail grew small, the fur flattening like a marten slinking into a nest. He shuffled on his feet, and his lips settled into a scowl. 

"Have you been to the shop?" he said.

She had to wonder at her disappointment. Had she actually expected an apology?

"Of course," she said. "Everything untouched, apparently. His wife can't recall anything unusual, either."

"Oh, the things Mrs. Otterton doesn't know," Wilde said with a flash of teeth. And just like that, he recovered his composure. 

His paws dug dens in his pockets. His ears, which had slumped like tents in a storm, flapped upright. Even his eyes relaxed, from poised-to-strike into what she now considered his default stare. 

Any emotion he might have genuinely felt was now masked by the semblance of amusement.

Judy felt her brows furrow. "If you know something, Wilde—"

He rolled his eyes. "Have you tried his club?"

She whipped out her notebook and pen. "Name?"

"Mystic Springs Oasis. Sahara Square, you can't miss it. Then again, it's not—" and she looked up in time to catch the growth of his smirk, "—exactly a place for a cute little bunny."

"Don't call me cute," she said, and shook the pen for emphasis. "And if I find out you've been misleading me . . ."

She let the threat hang into the silence.

He looked down and kicked some imaginary object.

"Emmitt's . . . a friend," he said, ears turning in two directions. "I wouldn't."

It was impossible to tell if he was being sincere.

Wilde put on a long-suffering sigh—an act, she instantly decided—and reached into his jacket. "Here," he said, holding out a white card with black trim, eyes darting everywhere but in her direction.

The tremor in his paw was so slight, she almost didn't notice it. Certainly it didn't stop him from making her hop up to grab the card.

He was a jerk like that.

No matter though, since this was information she'd wanted. Name— _Nick_ , not _Nicky_ , although she could have guessed that—number, email. _Personal Assistant_ , the card also said. She wondered if this meant Wilde was the personal assistant to the marmot, to Chuck Connors. She'd zoogled Moose Capital the night before last and discovered, much to her surprise and displeasure, that Connors was its CEO. 

Wilde wasn't on the Moose Capital website. She'd clicked on every "Meet the Team" link, even for the foreign offices, and found no picture of him, no job description, nothing to confirm he actually worked there.

Judy was reminded of this as she looked up from his card.

"Text me, if you want," he said, tail sweeping low across the steps. His gaze continued to avoid hers. "Maybe I'll know something."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said.

He looked straight at her, green with indignation. She hadn't held back her skepticism, and didn't regret it now.

No, Judy felt the moment their eyes met with the satisfaction of winning a race.

Oh, it was _good_ to be seen.

"Later, Wilde," she said, smirking, and leapt away.

*

 _You could've told me it was a *naturalist* club_ , she typed into her phone, seething at the screen.

Judy was about to hit send when she realized how she sounded. Weak, she thought, and began pressing delete.

Besides, she thought, still deleting the line, it might insult him. She wouldn't put it past him to be a so-called "naturalist" himself.

 _You wouldn't happen to know how to run a plate, would you?_ she wrote, and began erasing the words before her thoughts had even caught up with her horror. 

She couldn't reveal what she knew. Not right off the bat. 

_He *was* here_ , she sent finally, not even sure why she was even telling Wilde as much, except that she was at a loss on how to move forward.

She'd tried calling Clawhauser. Either he was busy at dispatch or he was ignoring her, but she'd yet to hear back from him. 

Judy had only just pocketed her phone when it vibrated. This was so unexpected, she fumbled while retrieving it. Fortunately, the glass didn't crack when it hit the sidewalk. Her parents would _not_ appreciate having to buy another expensive phone, she thought with more than a little panic. 

_you're welcome for the tip_

"For all that is good and crunchy," she swore. Wilde was fast, faster than she'd anticipated, and she was gratified, but. Did he always have to be this irritating?

_any new leads?_

She caught herself staring with her mouth open, and shook her head to clear it. That didn't help, and before she could think things through—she'd dialed his number.

He picked up during the first ring. "Wilde?" she asked.

"The one and only," he drawled. "You know, Fluff, I didn't give you my number so you would actually _call_ it."

Judy had planned on thanking him, if only grudgingly. Now she was speechless with indignation.

 _Fluff_?

Somehow that was worse than the other insults. It was worse, because: she wasn't that kind of rabbit, she'd sacrificed friendship and comfort in order to _not become_ that rabbit, and— _you're one big muscle_ , they'd said, and _she's definitely queer_ —

"Rabbit, if you don't say anything, I'm gonna hang up," he said. "Time is money, after all."

She could just imagine him: feet stretched out on a gleaming desk planted before the glass panorama of a skyscraper's seamless windows, eyes dead to the spectacular view, focused instead on picking at his claws. The perfect picture of privileged boredom.

"I should've figured that was all that mattered to you," she heard herself say through gritted teeth.

"Hey, that's not fair."

"Isn't it?"

"Wow," he said, voice gone flat. "Harsh. Look, did you actually call me for a reason, or—"

He sounded ready to hang up, and that kickstarted her panic. She was speaking over him before she could stop herself. "Otterton was picked up from the club by a white limousine."

"That really narrows it down," he said, so thickly sarcastic, she had to be imagining the hesitation beneath. "Seriously, is that the best you've got?"

Her eyes screwed shut. She bounced once on her toes, stomach churning with the knowledge that this was a terrible, terrible idea. "You . . . wouldn't happen to know someone who could run a plate, would you?"

The words blurred together, she spoke them so fast.

His silence seemed to curl. She didn't have to see his tail to know the dragon was preening.

"Ask nicely, Carrots, and I might."

Anger shot through her, so fast she didn't register it. "You're gonna want to refrain from calling me Carrots, _Slick_."

But she felt it now, in the silence. Anger made her introspective and alert, and she realized the silence was actually a murmur. Voices, tapping paws, clicking hooves, all mixed into one background, dissociated from individuality.

"My bad, I just naturally assumed you were from—"

From the murmur, someone started laughing.

He was taking her down in front of an _audience_. It was so obvious, she couldn't believe her own naiveté. All he'd wanted was an opportunity to taunt her.

The chill of combined fury and disappointment was numbing, surrounding her like a vice. "This was a mistake," she heard herself say as she took the phone from her ear.

"Hey, wait a minute—" he said right before she ended the call.

Why had she thought he would help her? 

Why had she expected more—from a _fox_?

There were tears prickling at her eyes. She was supposed to be better than this. Stronger.

Independent.

 _Jude doesn't need any friends,_ they'd said. _She's a one-rabbit army_ , they'd said. _Just once, I'd like to see her fall on her face_ , they'd said.

Her phone vibrated. 

_touchy, aren't you_

_it's rude to hang up in the middle of a conversation, you know_

_hello??? do you want my help or not?_

She hadn't realized she was reading his messages until she'd already finished reading them. Later, she would wonder at herself for pressing through to the call. At that moment, however, what mattered was getting in the last word.

He'd barely picked up before she shouted, "Is this some kind of game to you?"

"What is your _problem_?" he shouted back, and she was stunned to hear her anger echoed. "I'm helping you, aren't I? 

Pressure, mounting in her throat.

"No," she said, biting down the tears, "no, you're just _laughing_ at me—"

"Come on, Cottontail, who wouldn't?" At her silence—could he hear her wretchedness?—he coughed. "Sorry. That sounded . . . look, I didn't mean it like that."

She knew she should hang up and drive to the precinct. If she begged hard enough, someone would eventually take pity on her and run the plate. 

Then again, in exchange for endless disrespect from a fox, she'd risk losing face forever in the eyes of her colleagues.

"Yes, you did," she said.

"You got me there," he said, and damn him, there it was. Just enough combined humor and self-deprecation to keep her on the phone. 

He sighed, and she thought she heard the rustle of moving fur and fabric. "For what it's worth, I _can_ help you."

She felt her grip tighten. "Where are you?" she said. "Who else is listening?"

"I was in the hallway the first time you called," he said. "Now I'm walking to my office. Does it matter?"

" _Yes_ ," she said, fighting the sense of relief. Maybe the laughter in the background had been incidental.

Maybe it hadn't.

"Next time, give a fellow some warning before you call," said Wilde, and she heard the swing of hinges. 

"Are you in your office?"

"Yep. Closing the door right now."

Something about his tone comforted her. "Why are you helping me?" she said, instantly distrusting herself.

"Uh, 'cause you roped me into it?" 

"A real answer, Wilde."

"I told you, Emmitt's a friend," he said.

"And?"

The rhythm of claws hitting wood. He must have been walking on carpet earlier. "And maybe-maybe I want to prove you wrong about me."

"Huh?"

It made no sense. Why would he stoop to constantly _insulting_ her if he wanted to prove something?

"So _anyway_ ," he said loudly, as though trying to drown out the memory of his previous words. Fat chance of that, Judy thought. "You wanna find that car? You need to contact my old buddy Ed. He'll fix you up with access to all the right systems."

She felt her nose twitching in the pattern of a text, stories about bunnies with fatal illnesses who'd wound up seeking help from quack fox or badger doctors. The agony they'd faced at the foul stench of the cure, forced to decide whether to accept false hope or rightly reject the poison.

"And how will 'Ed' do that?"

"He's a private investigator," said Wilde, voice warping, and she imagined he'd let the phone drop to his shoulder, that he was holding it in place with his cheek while his paws did something else. 

A rattle, and she had a better picture now: metal drawers being pulled out and rummaged through. "If it makes you feel any better," he went on, "Ed's consulted for the police in the past. He's legit."

"I see," said Judy, although she really didn't. Where had Wilde gotten all these connections? 

"Don't sound so excited."

She frowned, wishing she could see his face, even though she suspected it would be set in the same stare as always. "Well, how am I supposed to contact him?"

"I'll text you his info, of course." 

There was an odd sensation in her chest. Later, she'd realize it was the same feeling she'd gotten watching elementary-school friends choose to sit with prettier and funnier and cooler kids in the middle-school cafeteria. 

"Oh," she said. 

He took in a breath as though to speak, then paused like he had to think it over. "So . . . we good now, rabbit?"

"I have a _name_ , you know."

"Right," he muttered, and she suspected he hadn't intended to say that out loud. "Are we good now, Hopps?"

Damn him. Damn him for making this so much easier than showing up at the precinct with her tail tucked between her legs. Damn him for that smooth voice, for reminding her of his blind act, for making her feel seen.

Damn him for giving her hope.

"Yeah," she said, and realized her paw had grown sweaty around the phone. She switched to the other, wiping the dampness onto her knee. "Yeah, Wilde, we're good."


	3. Chapter 3

Ed turned out to be a horse. At least, there were several framed pictures of a horse scattered around his office. Judy had been shown in by his secretary—a mare in a revealing red dress—and told to wait. After a minute of thumping her foot to the beats of songs about patience, she'd decided to _screw politeness_ and moved to examine the pictures.

One of them had caught her attention in particular. It showed a pack of Ranger Scouts, probably in their final year. The same horse from all the other photographs stood grinning towards the back, but that wasn't what struck her.

Wilde was in the picture. 

There was no mistaking him—that green sarcasm, that smile that took in the world and reflected it back as sorry and misshapen and worthy only of deepest contempt. The only difference to the fox she knew was that the one in the photograph wore a Ranger Scout uniform instead of a suit.

She leaned in. Seen up close, he became a little strange. The proportions weren't quite right, ears outstretched on his head like the wings of a moth spread past its narrow body. He'd still been growing at this point, she realized, and . . .

He'd been young. Fifteen, twenty years ago, Wilde had been _young_. 

Time hadn't been kind to him, she thought, picking up the frame for a better look at the coat fluffier than she'd ever seen it, the eyes half-lidded with what could almost be taken for mirth. The boy in the photograph had yet to develop hollow cheeks and a smoker's slouch. He didn't look like someone who expected to become haggard before his time.

These were not the only interesting details. Chuck Connors stood at the center of the frame, flashing massive incisors and claws as long and rough as chewed pencils. A hippopotamus she was certain now worked as his valet stood between the horse and a squint-eyed zebra, backing Connors with the promise of muscle. Kneeling beside Connors was a smiling wildebeest, eyes glinting for the camera with the vacancy of a drugged patient.

Wilde— _Nick_ , she thought, because it felt odd referring to a teenager by his last name—stood at an awkward distance to the others, at the very edge of the photograph. His tail wasn't even fully in the frame. If it weren't so unusual to see a predator in a prey pack, if she hadn't instantly recognized him on sight, she might have overlooked his presence entirely. Everyone but Connors dwarfed him.

Gideon had towered over her, blotting out the sun with his words and claws. Wilde, though—it was weird. 

He looked—there was no other word for it—like _prey_.

She tilted an ear, listening for footsteps. Hearing none, she took out her phone and photographed the photograph.

Ed still had not arrived by the time she'd finished examining the remaining group shots. Connors, the hippo, the horse, the wildebeest, and the zebra were obviously still close friends, appearing in several takes with their arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. 

Wilde was conspicuously absent from these, how should she put it, _brotherly_ moments. 

Maybe he was photo-shy. Or preferred to stand behind the camera. Someone had to have taken the photographs, after all.

Speaking of cameras. Judy looked down at her phone, saw the time, and felt her interest in solving the mystery of his Ranger Scout connections fade like accidentally exposed film.

Her forty-eight hours were ticking away like _nothing_ , it was almost _night_ , _again_ , and—

A horse burst into the room. She started, paws leaping for her utility belt before she could think.

"Officer Hopps," said Ed, trotting over.

He wore a dark trench coat over a turtleneck and slacks. He smelled . . . best not to think about it. He reached out with his hoof, and she shook it with her paw.

"So sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "Nicky told me all about the case."

Judy frowned, wondering what Wilde could have possibly said, as Ed moved past her to settle into an cushioned armchair behind his desk. He motioned at a plastic bucket seat in front of the desk, clearly intended for clients.

She remained standing.

"I apologize for coming in without an appointment, sir, but I'm on a _really_ tight schedule," she said, too stressed to offer more than the tightest of smiles. "Mr. Wilde said you'd be able to run a plate for me?"

"Of course, of course," he said. 

"Oh, thank you so much." She hopped up to his reach, giving him her notebook, opened to where she'd written down the license plate number.

"Oh, I don't need to run this," said Ed, shaking his mane. "This is one of Big's cars."

She blinked, wondering if she'd heard correctly. "'Big's cars'?"

"Mr. Big, the Tundratown crime boss, of course," said Ed, in a tone that made it clear Judy would look stupid if she asked for further clarification. "Well, Officer, I guess that explains it—mammals in his employ disappear all the time."

"In his employ?" she repeated. "You mean, Otterton might have _worked_ for Big?"

Ed paused, his expression opaque. "It makes sense, doesn't it? Even crime bosses need florists."

It made no sense. Why would Big have his own florist attacked? Could Otterton have known something?

Something nagged at the back of her mind, a memory, but she couldn't retrieve it.

"Did you know Otterton personally, sir?"

"Everyone knows him," said Ed, again in a tone that implied Judy would be lesser for admitting she didn't. 

Her expression must have given something away, for his nostrils flared. "I can see you're surprised. I'll admit, normally a pred wouldn't be my top choice for a florist, either—"

Judy felt her eyes widen.

Ed didn't seem to notice. "—but Otterton was one of the best around these parts, for sure. It's a damn shame he got on Big's bad side, is all I can say."

She swallowed. Ed had assumed a lot about her, and it took some effort to keep herself from opening her mouth to correct him. But she also wasn't exactly sure what she would say.

More important, she had a job to do.

"I need to get to that car," she said, glad her voice stayed even. "There could be evidence inside."

Ed snorted, then tried to cover the sound as a cough. "You've got guts, I'll give you that," he said, returning her notebook to her paw. "Most cops would turn tail the moment they heard Big was involved." 

She bristled. 

"Then again," he continued, turning to his computer and tapping into the keyboard with cloudy fingers, "I'm pretty sure this car's a rental. If it's parked, it won't be on Big's property. You might be able to get in and out without anyone the wiser."

"Do you have an idea where I might find it?"

Ed was silent, squinting at the monitor and typing. 

"I can do better," he said, and turned to her with a smile. "I can take you there. But first," and he winked, "we'll need to borrow Nicky."

_Borrow?_ she thought.

"Wilde?" she heard herself say. "Why?"

He stood, smiling at her bafflement. "Some situations, I've come to learn, are better approached with a fox in tow."

Judy had thought Ed couldn't make her any more uncomfortable. Now she thought about the fox at the edge of the pack of Ranger Scouts. His already perfected mask.

"I'm not sure I understand, sir," she said, but her voice came out sounding weak.

Ed was already tapping out a message on his phone.

*

Wilde arrived in a taxi. She could see his impassive smile through the window. That smile didn't falter as his door opened into a snowdrift, not even once he realized he'd have to jump over said snowdrift. 

He landed with the sure certainty of a predator built to pounce for the kill. In the past, the sight might have made her uncomfortable, or more likely envious—she'd run track, she could admire grace as much as the next athlete—but she would only think in those terms later, when reflecting back on the moment.

Right then, all she could think was that the snow couldn't be good for his suit, and that he was _pretending_ not to mind. That once again, in his own way, he was _lying_.

She found her gaze drifting to his ears, and thought again of pyramids, standing isolated and unmovable in a desert.

"Ed, my man," he said, smiling with all the sincerity of the villain in a stage play. His tail lurched as he turned to her. "And if it isn't Officer Hopps."

Judy had her arms crossed over her chest. She didn't like this situation one bit. It was past dusk, they were standing in front of the locked gate to a company that had rented a refrigerated limo to a notorious crime boss, and Ed still hadn't told her why they needed a fox, specifically.

Also: she didn't have a warrant, yet couldn't quite bring herself to admit as much.

"Thanks for coming, Nicky," said Ed. "Chuck say what I owe him?"

Wilde winked. "Stop by at the penthouse," he said, leaning back with his paws burrowed into his pockets and making some sort of secret sign with his eyebrows.

Ed gave a big, whinnying laugh. 

Judy looked down at the snow. She'd known they were rich, but it was . . . unsettling, somehow, to hear wealth spoken of so casually.

"Let's get this party started," said Wilde, and she glanced up to see him peeling off his suit jacket. She could see its inner flaps, an underbelly of embroidery and luxurious silk.

As if on cue, Ed moved forward, taking the jacket and folding it over one arm.

"What are you doing?" she said.

Wilde had unbuttoned his shirt sleeves. He was rolling them past where the shaggy black of his wrists married the length of his arms, glistening strands of red and grey and brown. 

"You don't have a warrant," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. 

"Well, _no_ —"

"So I'm the next best thing." 

She took a step back, feeling her brows furrow. He couldn't possibly be implying what he was implying, she thought.

Ed huffed. "Hurry up, will you? It's freezing out here."

Wilde smirked, his tail lashing at the snow. 

Judy made the mistake of blinking. By the time she'd reopened her eyes, he'd bounded onto the fence. 

"See you on the other side, Officer Fluff!"

"Wilde!" she shouted, rushing to the fence and shaking it from below. "Get back down here!"

"What are you waiting for?" said Ed, appearing at her side. She turned to glare at him, and he glared back as though _she_ were the unreasonable one. "You don't need a warrant if you have probable cause!"

"What are you _talking_ about?" she said, because even though she now had a very good idea—because even though part of her could grudgingly admit that it _was_ in her interests to follow through with this—she also didn't like Ed.

She didn't want to be _like_ Ed.

"You've got a _shifty lowlife_ climbing the fence," said Ed, stabbing a hoof towards Wilde, who in that very moment was swinging over the top like it was the newest kind of pole vault. "That's probable cause laid out for you on a platter!"

There was a crunch of snow, and then Wilde appeared on the other side of the fence, waggling dark fingers at her through the wire. Even in the cold, he emitted fragrance: fire and water. "Aren't you gonna come and get me, Carrots?" 

She let her ears point to the side, then backward, rabbit-speak for anger. Showed him all her teeth, even the cheek-teeth lurking behind the legionary shields that were her buckteeth. "I know why you're calling me names."

An answering flash of canines. "Is it working?"

"No," she said, because she had to say it for herself, at least. "I do _not_ like this plan."

Wilde stared at her for a moment, his ears pricked as though waiting for a qualification. 

He shook his head as though to clear it. "Can you believe this?" he said to Ed, pointing at Judy with an index finger and thumb.

"No, and I'm starting to think I wasted my time," said Ed in a low voice.

Judy felt her tail rise away from her body, her backwards-facing ears lowering to her head with actual anger. 

She didn't have to listen to this _ass_. 

"Good, because I won't be needing any more of your help," she said.

Running to gather speed, she shoved past his legs and threw herself head-first into the snow. She was already in her own tunnel before he could protest, the snow acting as a silencer between them.

Emerging on the other side, she didn't bother turning around, choosing instead to march on to the parked cars.

"Hopps!" said Wilde.

She shook her head as though his voice was a fly, keeping her gaze focused on finding the limo in question. 

Murmurs. _Piece of work_. _Penthouse_.

Bingo, she thought, brushing snow from the matching license plate. A quick inspection revealed that the entire car was unlocked.

Careless. Suspicious? 

She pulled open the driver's door and climbed inside. Muffled by metal and plastic and snow, she thought she heard the start of an engine.

A moment later, Wilde appeared at the opposite door. She ignored him, aiming her phone flashlight at molded floorboards.

"You're unbelievable, Hopps," he hissed. "Ed just did you a huge favor, and you didn't even have the decency to thank him."

"Is he gone?"

"Yeah, you really pissed him off."

She sucked in breath, wanting the bite of cold air against her cheeks. "Good."

A glance upward confirmed that Wilde was eyeing her with all the hostility in his arsenal. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Are all of your friends like that, Wilde?" she asked, and spotted what had to be polar-bear fur next to the gas pedal. "Because that horse is one grade-A jerk."

"Like you'd know!"

She hopped forward to pick up the clump. White at a distance, it looked almost black when held under her nose.

"Why are you defending him?" she asked. "He _literally_ called you a shifty low-life!"

"Ed didn't mean any of that."

She pocketed the fur. "If you say so."

"Come on," said Wilde, sharp, enough to make her look at him. "Are you seriously saying you'd rather be on the other side of the fence right now?" 

She watched, unable to speak, as he leaned against the dashboard. His ears rotated like conches tossed by the surf, the slits reminding her of the apertures to their shells, of how the conch emerged in stealth to poison its prey.

In silence, she watched his eyes grow hard.

"I didn't think so."

"Wilde—"

He silenced her with a violent shake of his paws. "Nuh-uh," he said. "You've gotten to say more than your share. I didn't have to help you. But I did, even though you walk around carrying _fox repellant_." 

Her heart picked up pace.

"Yeah," he said, pointing down with his snout, "don't think I didn't notice that little item the first day we met!"

She swallowed past the shame. Focused on the menace to his voice.

The alarm bells it was setting off.

"So let me ask you: who's the greater hypocrite? Ed, who's literally kept me out of the _gutter_ all these years, or the naive little hick who's decided to tolerate a fox because it suits her _ends_?"

He was still speaking, something about how his friends had helped him see himself as more than just a fox, but the words mingled with the blood drumming in her ears, becoming cacophonous noise. 

The more he moved, the more his shadow merged with her memory. Red coat, green mind, white teeth. Switchblade claws—paws black and innocuous as SAP caps—fur spiked in mimicry of carnassial peaks—eyes like the spirit foxes in her imagination, scheming to steal her very skull and soul—

She thought her heart had grown paper walls, and that they would burst next beat.

"You don't know a thing about me," she heard herself whisper. 

Her body resisted her. Her body wished to bolt away, but she forced it to hold still, because there was a part of her still rational, that knew she would only be leaping into a trap. And so she cowered, trembling, both with and against her will.

"And I no longer care to," said Wilde.

His expression sent ice careening down her spine, and she thought of floods, of families found entombed in their warrens. From the cave of his mouth, canines flashed like the upended stakes of a dam.

"So long, Officer," he said, and mock-saluted. "It really _wasn't_ a ball."

Neither of them heard the approaching polar bears.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting more than one chapter today. I feel this earlier stuff suffers from having been written earliest, but can't seem to fix it. Thank you for reading.

Being squashed together in the backseat between Raymond and Kevin—how Wilde knew their names, Judy didn't want to know—had at least one perk: she spotted Otterton's wallet on the floor. Then there was the condition of the backseat itself: scuffed, torn, bitten, smeared with what _had_ to be blood.

"Otterton _was_ attacked here," she told Wilde in an undertone.

Being nearly asphyxiated on a crime scene had also done wonders for her composure. She felt as calm as a surgeon riding on the high of risk.

"I hate you," he whispered. 

She thought about that, then gripped his trembling paw, because he was far more afraid than she was. 

He didn't pull away, clearly too petrified to move, and she made a pact with herself. Even with all that was now between them, she wouldn't be the first to let go.

*

Mr. Big was not what she'd expected. Nor was he happy to see them, but she'd expected that.

What was really strange was that he seemed to think Wilde was spying on him for Moose Capital. Nothing Wilde said seemed to be able to convince him otherwise.

Judy couldn't really follow their conversation, which involved a lot of seemingly pointless name-dropping and esoteric discussion of investments or somesuch, so she tried to shift the attention to herself and the real issue of Otterton. Without even thinking it through, she found herself threatening Big in front of his muscle.

Well, she wasn't scared of some ice water, anyway.

"Please, God, please," she heard Wilde say.

For the first time, she realized, he smelled of more than cologne and his vice. The fear sent something sulfurous, unpleasant through her, a kind of heartache. 

She heard her breath catch.

The polar bear might have her by the scruff, she realized, but she still had her ability to speak. 

"Nick," she said.

At this angle, she could see little more of him than paws scrabbling at air. From here, they looked like black bugs, easily squashed.

The red-gold of his muzzle, shaking spittle as he yipped and begged. 

"I'm so sorry," she said, speaking slowly and clearly, so there was no mistaking her sincerity—and her deep, if belated, sense of remorse. "You deserved so much better. I'm sorry."

He didn't respond, didn't even acknowledge having heard, and she prepared to die knowing he would never forgive her, knowing he would die because of her carelessness and pride.

Then, salvation in the form of a little shrew.

*

"You don't have to come with me. Just—order a Zuber," she said. Big's driver had dropped them both off in the Rainforest District, but only because Nick had been too terrified to ask for a ride home, she thought. Nick's terror had been so acute since their near-brush with a watery death, he'd yet to do anything more than silently follow her lead, really.

He'd always struck her as a little nervous, what with the constant tremor in his paws and his unconscious habit of touching the pocket over his heart where he kept his lighter and cigarettes.

A car passed them by, the beam of its headlights scratching the gold of his muzzle, then striking puddles, splitting cracks through roadside mud.

Now, though, he was literally jumping at shadows. 

The drone and hiss of the car died down, and she glanced at Nick, hopeful he would finally say something.

Even in the faint glow cast by a sizzling street lamp, she couldn't make out much more of him than the eerie red of his eyeshine.

She sighed and, without thinking, began wringing her paws. "Listen," she said. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I put you in danger through my actions. I'm sorry I was a jerk to you and your friend, for making assumptions about you without actually making the effort to get to know you. I'm sorry about this," and she made to unclip the canister from her belt—so intent on the act she missed his flinch—only to realize there was no nearby waste container.

She straightened with a grimace. "I promise to throw it out the first chance I get. There's a story behind it, but that doesn't mean it was right to carry a product specifically aimed at foxes. I'm sorry."

A deep breath, and she wished he would say something, anything. Even his yelling, even his frightening her half to death, even _that_ was better than silent reproach. "Because I'm selfish," she said, pushing forward because she knew no other way, "I'm—I'm glad I met you. I wish I had a chance to get to know you better. You said I only tolerated you because you're a fox, and maybe that was true at the start, but . . ."

She considered mentioning Ed.

". . . you're so much more than that, Nick, and . . . I would be proud to be your friend. But I also understand that you don't feel the same way. So if you still want to go separate ways, I'll understand, because . . ." A fortifying breath. ". . . because you have every right to hate me."

There were tears blurring her vision, and she felt her hearing awareness sharpening. The echo of her inner voice gave way to the muffled patter of rain, the sigh of soaked and swaying leaves.

Nick had his paws crammed in his pockets and his muzzle pointed at the ground. 

Suddenly, he turned away.

She was stunned, despite herself. After unloading herself like that . . .

Best just leave him alone, she decided, even as the hurt smarted at her throat, threatening her ability to swallow. Swiping her eyes clear, she stepped towards the hanging bridge that would lead her closer to solving the case.

"Please take care of yourself," she said, hesitating at the threshold. 

Silence. She took a shaky step, then another. With every step forward, she felt a little less guilt at leaving him behind.

*

"Wait," he heard himself say.

If she heard him, she didn't say anything. She was still walking away, he realized.

He whirled, desperation bubbling in him something hot. Dashed to the edge of the bridge, paws landing on the slick rope of the rails. "Carrots, wait!"

She stopped but didn't otherwise move, and against his better judgment he found himself making his way onto the deck. The wood was slippery and awfully sticky against the pads of his feet, but he didn't stop until he knew she was listening.

"Go home, Wilde," she said, and he couldn't tell if she was angry.

"No," he said, voice coming out high and fast, "no, I came this far, I'm not leaving now. You can't make me," he added, not caring that he sounded like a kit.

He was afraid, more afraid than he'd been in his entire life. But an idea had lodged in him: he was safer with her than anywhere else.

"Sure I can."

"But you won't," he said.

She wouldn't abandon him now, he thought, heart beating fast, fast, faster.

"Nick, I can't guarantee your safety," she said, and it was the _Nick_ that made him certain of his decision.

"I'll take my chances." She was peeking around her shoulder, ears rising from where they'd shrunk like dying worms against her head, and he felt his heart begin to gentle. 

He put on a smile, swishing his tail to convince her that he'd recovered his _joie de vivre_. "After all," he said, "you're one scary rabbit. Even those polar bears were impressed."

He'd thought she'd laugh. Instead, her ears wilted. 

Worse, at least in his mind, her little cottontail had frozen close to her body like a kind of _go-away_ sign.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," she said. "I can't protect you from that kind of danger."

"Hopps," he said, now reduced to begging, and as he stepped forward she turned to face him fully. He leapt at the opportunity, bending slightly at the knees and enveloping her paws in his. "Did you mean it when you said we could be friends?"

"You don't have to do this to be my friend."

Her paws were small, small, and so soft. The lightness to them was almost marvelous, so different from hooves and curved claws, and he found himself stroking the tops with his thumbs.

"Well, as your _friend_ , I don't want to see you doing this alone."

She was pulling her paws away, and he tried not to let her go. "Nick—"

"Please," he said, squeezing all his conviction and commitment into his increasingly tentative grasp on her, i.e. the conversation.

She began gritting her teeth. He'd known that rabbits did this, because he'd seen it in a weird horror movie, but he still didn't know what it meant. 

In his moment of distraction—alright, so he was fascinated by the _teensy-weensy_ contortions of her rabbit-face, sue him—she managed to slip her paws from his fingers. "Promise me you'll run at the first sign of something amiss."

"Sweetheart, that's practically guaranteed."

" _Promise_."

He rolled his eyes and crossed his heart, feeling an uncomfortable stab of guilt as he did so. Somehow, he wasn't exactly certain how, he'd conned her into thinking he was better than a slinking coward, a conniving two-face. 

They'd been right to muzzle him, all those years ago. 

Wasn't that the truth.

"You better have meant it, Wilde," she said, hip canted to the side with one paw on it, her eyes squinting in mock-suspicion. "I'm gonna hold you to your word."

A nervous chuckle, definitely _not_ what he'd been going for. "So I don't know about you, but as for _me_ , I'm just itching to talk to this Manchas fellow," he said.

Better.

Her expression cleared, and then he felt her swatting him in the arm. 

"Well, look at you, Junior Detective," she said, disbelieving, at the same moment he began cursing himself for rushing ahead before he could have a smoke. He closed trembling paws over sweating pads.

Not for the first time that day, he regretted his expensive clothes. 

"Got it in one," he said with his best wink.

She snorted.

As she strode past him, he saw her tail wiggle, almost like she was happy.

*

Nick has spent most of his life surrounded by prey: scouting with prey, working for prey, being hedonistic as fuck with prey, getting drunk and high with prey, sweet-talking and having kinky sex with prey, pretending to be _like_ prey until they decide it's more fun that he isn't. When the game switches to flashing fang and metal, they're still above him and in charge, but he never forgets what he is, the power he could exercise without control.

Never once in his life has he actually _felt_ like prey.

"Run," says Hopps.

He hesitates. This can't actually be real, he thinks, even as he feels his hackles rise, his heart swell and skip in his chest.

She snatches his paw with greater strength than he'd credit her for, tugs him effectively towards the bridge.

"Jump!" she shouts, and his ears drop.

Nick knows he's a bone-fide coward. If his life's been one gigantic party, he's also been running for most of it.

"Head _down_ , Wilde!"

Later, he would think back to his reaction with all the self-loathing in his being. For all his awareness of his failings, for all that he was constantly brimming with fear, he'd never once considered he'd have it in him to flee like a bunny.

Caught in the moment, however, that's exactly what he does.


	5. Chapter 5

Nick was using the relative quiet to smoke and pretend heart-attack wasn't absolutely inevitable when she called his name.

Outwardly, he didn't react. Inwardly, he sensed the stirrings of panic.

He was _not_ thinking about how it had felt to be cornered on the gondola platform. Quaking, then freezing. 

Without Hopps . . .

The spike of fear had hit him in a white-out, turning off all nuance, all sense—and in hindsight, it was his own loss of control that frightened him most. What if, in some perverse way, that was how it felt to go _savage_? What if— 

The next time someone cuffed him to a bedpost, he thought firmly, he wouldn't even _think_ about complaining.

"Nick!"

Assuming a toothless grin, he tossed the cigarette.

Hopps stood at the center of the platform. She tried to smile as he emerged from behind the hulking line of standard cop types. Apex herbivores and predators, sheathed in enough plate armor to flatten all the foxes in the world, and he had to wonder how many of them were corrupt.

She gestured with a flick of paw, anxiety turning her smile into something more akin to a grimace. He felt his heart pick up speed as he passed a rhino and tiger, both sweating out their respective dinners: masticated grass, rancid crickets, stale beer. 

Nick stepped onto the waterlogged platform, stomach churning, grin gone. A feeble light streamed onto the wood from a lantern ringed by bugs more dead than alive. He stopped at the flickering edge of its reach, some stubbornness in him unwilling to part fully from the shadows.

"What, you think I'm going to believe a fox?"

 _So_ predictable, Nick thought, and felt the automatic return of his smile.

He _could_ complain to City Hall, he thought, and the vindictive pleasure accompanying the image widened his smile to include teeth. Then he thought about what complaining would involve.

His smile dropped.

Hopps, bless the little do-gooder, didn't follow Chief Buffalo Butt's crass speciesism with her own, choosing instead to defend Nick's credibility as an eyewitness. A noble and utterly futile strategy, he could have told her.

God, he thought, fidgeting, if only his pulse would stop _racing_.

" _Two days_ to find the otter. Or—"

Nick felt his paws digging into his pockets. He leaned back, wishing they'd stop trembling. Cursed his errant heart, ever beating faster, faster, like the race would be won by tearing away from him.

"—you quit. That was the deal."

He almost wished he _could_ cut it out. Metaphorically the deed was long done, so _why_ wouldn't it—

"Badge!"

stop.

" _Badge!_ "

Distantly, Nick was aware of his mouth falling open. His heartbeat, returned.

His panic, cresting like a wave.

No, said Dismay as Hopps began to comply, no, _no_ —

It wasn't the silence of her colleagues, he'd later reflect, curled up in the relative safety of his own bed, although _damn them_ , watching as though this were the Best Course of Action, as though sacrificing a good cop's dreams to the altar of their prejudices and assumptions were somehow conscionable and necessary. Nor was it the defeated slump to her ears and tail and _self_ , although he'd remember it'd sent something sour up his throat, upsetting memories best left untouched.

No, the explanation he'd settle on was far simpler. 

Self-preservation. _Hello_ , he was a fox! Self-preservation was why he'd gone with her to Manchas in the first place, and she'd proven better than hoped, saving his life not once but a whopping twice. It was so simple, only an imbecile could misunderstand. Like increasing returns. 

Of _course_ that was what had driven him to do it.

In real time, when he'd spoken up, it had been for no reason he could fathom.

"Uh, no," he'd heard himself say.

That bit could be dismissed as accident. He hadn't _planned_ on speaking. But then—

"What did you say, _fox_?"

 _Then_ he'd stepped forward, and it had been a conscious act. "Sorry," he'd said, looking to where she stood in the light and knowing he'd make his way there. "What I said was: _no_ , she will not be giving you that badge."

To hell with Chief Bozo and his goons.

It had worked, too, like any good strategy. Nick was a _great_ strategist, thank you very much.

Strange thing was: it'd felt right.

*

In real time, he was exhausted and uncomfortable in his damp, ruined suit—and therefore distressingly prone to bouts of sentimental idiocy.

"Thank you," she said from the other end of the gondola, still withdrawn and shell-shocked but rallying fast, and somehow that got him back to thinking about his own childhood, about how he both wished and didn't wish he'd had his older self to stand up for him then.

"Never let them see they get to you," he said. It was a mistake he kept seeing her make.

It was also a good reminder for himself.

Control was one of the few traits in a mammal Nick could respect. He wasn't proud of his moment back in the car. He'd erupted at her like a half-savage, like a beast struggling to comprehend the difference between maiming and speech.

The more he recalled his own actions, the more perturbed he became.

If fearlessness could physically manifest, Hopps would be the form it took. Black-hearted polar bears, mindlessly savage jaguar, they'd not so much as fazed her. Under _his_ shadow in the car, on the other paw—

He was _her_ predator, but it was one thing to know that in the abstract, to play harmless games, even to be singled out and labelled as such by the canister on her belt, and something else altogether to _be_ it. There was a rush he hadn't known would be involved, powerful because it had made him be seen. 

He could be made desperate for more of that feeling. It wasn't anything like what he knew from his boardroom-bedroom role. Seeing her nose twitch, smelling the sick rise of fear, watching the colors drain from her eyes as the pupils burst—it had thrilled him.

Not anymore. Now it made him feel shame.

Not that he would apologize. Whatever he'd said in the heat of the moment—for he preferred not to think about his actual words, about how much he'd revealed of his own shell—she now felt like she owed him something. 

In fact, maybe it would be in his interests to reveal a little more.

She'd been silent for quite some time, and he looked over, eyes falling on the orange gag-pen tucked into her belt. 

That had to go, he thought. If the other cops were going to take her seriously, she couldn't be walking around with a pen that literally looked like a carrot. He decided he could both break the ice and drive home the point. 

"Carrots?"

"So . . . things _do_ get to you?"

He glanced at her face, saw the real question. Her gaze was too intense, so he fixed his own back on their surroundings.

What the hell, he thought, an apology couldn't hurt. "Only on special occasions," he said. "Look, I, uh—I was out of line. Back there. In the car. I . . ."

Whoa whoa _whoa_ there, she'd put her _paw_ on his exposed forearm. Emotional manipulation was exclusively _his_ job, rabbit!

Did he now regret leaving his jacket in Ed's safekeeping? Yes, yes, he did.

"Nick, I won't lie. I was scared. But it wasn't because of you."

She squeezed what little she could of his arm, and he would've squirmed if he hadn't been so busy replaying her words.

(even though you're a—)

"When I was a kid," she said, and he forced himself to focus in on her voice, because this could be useful information, "I did something that I'm not very proud of. I was only nine, but I already thought I was right about everything."

Might as well unstopper the charm. "Probably because you were."

She was unmoved. "One day, my friends and I put on a skit for a festival talent show. We'd written it ourselves and were real proud to be performing in front of the whole town. Everything was going nicely, too. We had music and all these amazing costumes and I got to cover myself in fake blood, the audience was really getting into it. Then I announced that I was going to become a police officer."

What was he supposed to do, smile? 

His mouth slid up at the corners just as she took in a breath. Deep and harsh, and he felt his ears flatten at the warning. "In the front row, right where I could see him, there was this one kid in particular. A fox." 

Widen the smile. Ignore how she was looking at him, how his own tail lurched at the emotion in her eyes.

"We'd never gotten along," she continued. "He was a bully, the kind that pushed around smaller kids. But I was pushy too, just with words. When I said I wanted to be a cop, he laughed, said it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard."

Her voice had slipped into a twang. Should he make fun of it? he wondered.

The salient question was: would it keep her from telling the rest of this pointless story?

Probably not. So he kept on smiling, even though his ears were creased back like origami birds. 

Even though his tail wanted to cast itself off from his body and sink.

"Not the nicest thing to say, no question," she went on. "Instead of ignoring him, though, like I _should've_ , I singled him out in front of the whole audience. Called him," and her mouth became a live wire, jerking and twisting into a frown, "small-minded. Like I would _know_."

"Wow, Carrots," he said, pushing off from the railing to increase his height. Her paw remained on his arm, so he laughed with the force of mockery, hoping it would dispel her. "If that's your worst—"

"I'm not finished," she said, rolling over his words with her own force, the force of honesty.

He ran his tongue over his teeth. 

Sometimes, as a teen, he'd nicked himself on purpose. Nick _nicking_ himself, wasn't that hilarious?

She nodded like she'd heard the silent question. "After the show was over, Gideon—that's his name—was frustrated. He took it out on my friend. I stood up to him, and he repeated something I'd said in the play about predators and prey of old: before we'd resolved our differences, before Zootopia. The thing is, he saw something there, a way to get back at me. And I've been thinking, and—"

Nick shook his head, no longer listening. Hopps was taking something simple and spinning it wildly out of proportion, he thought. Her bully was nothing more than what he sounded like: a _bad fox_. 

She'd been right to take him down.

Without his troop, Nick knew he'd never have amounted to more himself. Instead of serving the city elite, he'd be a pawpsicle-hustler like Finn or a petty criminal like his cousins. Fox trash, living in a box under a bridge; a disgusting, cringing, good-for-nothing bottom feeder scraping a dirty living off the streets.

Yes, he was a fox. But was he _that_ kind of fox? No. No, he wasn't. And he was proud of the fact. Proud of the fact that he, Nicholas Wilde, had figured out at age nine what no other fox in his acquaintance, not even his mother, seemed clever enough to grasp.

The only _good_ fox was the fox prey wanted and needed. If you wanted to succeed in life, that was how you did it.

It was so simple, you literally had to be stupid not to understand.

". . . gave me these." 

She'd been trying to pick up his paw, he realized with his heart shooting into his throat. And he'd been distracted enough to let her. 

With the tunnel vision of horror, he watched more than felt her guide two of his fingers to her cheek. Watched more than felt her push them against the run of the fur, down until his pads reached the goose-bump layer of skin. It was rougher than the rest of her, he thought distantly, not anything like the fur that felt as good as silk against his fingers.

The skin was ragged and raised at the edges, like . . .

He balked. _Scars?_

"I know better now," she was saying, eyes wet and big and horribly earnest. "I know, without my words, Gideon might not've done it. And—"

Nick withdrew his paw like she'd made him touch acid. "Are you even listening to yourself?" he said.

She stared, eyes clouding with offense.

"You were hurt," he said, pointing at her cheek, then waggling his fingers behind his ears for emphasis, "by a _fox_! A fox hurt you, as in actually _hurt_ you! Did you maybe hit your head on something back there in the forest? In what reality does it make sense to defend your _bully_?"

She ground her teeth before answering. "I already told you. Once I started thinking about _why_ I had the fox repellant, I realized that most of the reasons were terrible."

"Forget about the fox repellant!" Nick shouted, genuinely sick of hearing about it. "I regret ever mentioning the stupid fox repellant!"

Her expression shut like the door to the nap-room in his old kindergarten; he could almost hear the teacher's sermons on disruptive, attention-seeking kits. "You're overreacting."

"No, you're overreacting!" he said, the words setting off his ticker of a heart. "Your bully was a _bad fox_ , Carrots! If you give him an out, you're just being stupid!"

"I never said—"

"Give a fox an in and he'll use it," he went on, seething.

"That's a stereotype!" she said, tearing at her fur in frustration. "Why have you stopped making sense?"

He was frustrated too. He could feel his eyes in their sockets, distended like the stuffing of shredded plush.

" _I'm_ the one not making sense?" he said. "Carrots, what happens the next time you run into a bad guy? Are you gonna do your job and focus on _getting_ the perp so he can sit behind bars where he _belongs_ , trusting the actual lawyers and psychologists to handle the rest? Or are you gonna overstep your bounds and try to make sense of his sob story, giving him the advantage he needs to pull one over you, thereby allowing him to succeed at his nefarious scheme while leaving you _and_ this city at risk of ending up in a position far worse than _before_?"

She'd glared at him for most of this speech, ears twisted backward over her head and tense as a bow's drawn belly. 

Briefly, he entertained the notion that the increasingly erratic thump of her foot against the swaying floor had grown synchronous with the disintegrating rhythm of his heart.

Then he remembered his mien of exaggerated patience. Let his paws mimic weighing motions. "Do you _think_ the first scenario might be the _better_ one?"

"Neither scenario is realistic, so no," she said. "Also that's a frankly appalling set of assumptions about me _and_ my job." 

She exhaled, nose twitching with the pulse of resentment. "We both know you don't actually think like this, Nick, so why don't you just tell me what's _really_ bothering you?"

He wanted to tear his ears off.

Her eyes flashed.

She was going to get herself _killed_ , he thought, and did what he never did to prey: he pounced. 

Grabbed her shoulders and shook them. "Just because I don't like it when you're afraid of _me_ doesn't mean you shouldn't be afraid of _them_!"

" _Huh?_ "

Nick tried to replay his words in his head, but it took a moment before he remembered them. The more he remembered, the more acutely he became aware of his paws and what they were holding.

He looked at her wide, wide eyes, and felt his tail fur begin to stand on end.

"Boy, would you _look_ at the traffic down there!" he said, springing to the side of the gondola. Anything to forestall his immanent panic attack! 

When had it become dawn? he wondered. Why was he still _here_?!

What the hell was wrong with him ? ! ?

Since there was nothing he could do about any of these things until the gondola came to a stop, he decided to simply put a stop to thinking! "How about we go to Chuck in Traffic Central. Chuck, how are things looking on those Jam Cams?"

She tugged at his arm. "Nick," she said. "Stop _running_."

Running, the jaguar had swiped at his tail, catching in the fur and almost slicing through bone! Running, Nick had slipped off the bridge, and fallen, and looked up at the bridge while falling, and . . .

"The Jam Cams," he said in realization.

"Seriously, Nick, we need to talk."

"N-no," he said, heart leaping in his chest. This was it. Once he told her this, everything else would be forgiven, forgotten. There would be no need to talk about _any_ of it, ever again. She would continue protecting him from Big's inevitable backlash, he would continue imparting life lessons while offering priceless assistance on cases, and everything would go beautifully according to plan.

She tried to speak, but he was faster, silencing her with a finger. "Sh-shush. There are traffic cameras everywhere, all over the canopy! Whatever happened to that jaguar—"

Oh, but she caught on quick.

"Sly fox," she said with the brightness of elation.

You have no idea, he thought, and smiled.


	6. Chapter 6

Unfortunately, the mayor's office didn't open until nine, and it was only five twenty-two. 

(In hindsight, he wished he'd forgone the dramatic exit per gondola and called a Zuber from the platform. It would've saved _so much time_. Then again, Carrots probably would've insisted they go back for her joke-mobile, so maybe not.)

Nick agonized over what to do before finally admitting to himself that he'd been gunning for this scenario all along. The problem was: how to sell it. If she refused, he'd have to find another way to tag along with her. There was no way he was going to enter his apartment or a hotel room alone.

Turned out, he needn't have worried.

"You have your own _shower_?" she said, interrupting him mid-pitch. "Can I use it?"

"Uh," he said, trying and failing not to picture it. Better to think about how much he looked forward to a shower himself; he was starting to smell like fox. "Yes?"

"I don't want to waste any time," she announced once they were inside a spotted cab. The engine had barely started and she was already bouncing in the seat and fretting over not having a clean uniform and about Buffalo Britches and the _case_ instead of important things like their continued safety, sleep deprivation, and breakfast, and wasn't she a _riot_?

Nick met the eyes of the cab driver, a ram with wool that smelled like coffee and oil and that was brown at the edges, like someone had held a blowtorch to the curls. The ram looked away first, which to Nick meant he disapproved of whatever they were and whatever the hell they were doing.

It didn't matter. Things were going _Nick's_ way for once, and some douchebag's blanket disapproval wasn't gonna change the fact that he'd been _right_. Talking about the Jam Cams had served a kind of magic, switching Hopps into cop mode on serious overdrive. If she was thinking other thoughts, Nick was none the wiser.

He _liked_ it that way.

"Pull up here," he said, pointing at take-away joint covered in red paper lanterns and a flag with a fish on it. 

The ram brought the car to an abrupt halt. If they hadn't been wearing seatbelts, they'd have been thrown against the dash. 

"Thanks, buddy," said Nick, and while he _could_ choose to leave less than a twenty-percent tip—he knew exactly what it cost the cab-company when he used his credit-card—he also felt he had to compensate for the collective stinginess of foxes city-wide.

He left thirty-percent with his phone—" _thirty_ -percent?" Hopps asked in horrified stage-whisper—before they exited, Nick making sure to smile at the driver while closing the door like it was the delicate lid of his grandmother's heirloom snuff-box.

"Wow," she said, taking in the tree-lined sidewalks, the brownstones, the fairly breathable air. Her nose began to twitch, and he figured she could smell residual odors from the take-away. 

Yep. She was pointing at it now. "That looks cool." 

"I'll take you there sometime," he said. "They make, uh—" and he realized he didn't know if she ate things like tofu, "—these, uh, really great waffles with, um, red bean paste in the middle." 

Did rabbits eat protein of _any_ kind? Most of the prey he dealt with did in some way or another, but this was the city, not Carrotville. 

"Like kidney beans?"

"Nah, different kind. Sweet beans." She seemed to be following, so he decided to share the most important detail. "The waffles, uh, look like fishes."

Secretly, Nick loved those waffles, because he could bite into them and feel like he was eating a fish without actually having to be the kind of predator who actually ate fish. Which he was _not_ , thank you for asking.

"Fishes," she repeated with her mouth curling up, like she found this strange but also strangely charming.

He was too tired to do more than nod. "Yeah, but there's no fish actually _in_ them, if you know what I mean."

Forcing his ears to rise to high alert, he unlocked the door to the walk-up beside the take-away. The hallway beyond was dim and seemingly empty, but he drew in a long, careful sniff. 

It smelled no different than usual: there was that special odor of trapped air, plus exhaust from diesel engines and the acrid, metallic dust from that dubious-looking construction site down the street. All topped off by notes of sun-baked garbage, postal ink, and the mixed musk of beavers, otters, groundhogs, pigs and—his own cologne.

He must've been standing longer at the threshold than he'd thought, for Hopps made a little noise and slipped in past him. Her ears were quivering, he noticed. "Hear anything suspicious?" he whispered.

"No, but if it would make you feel better, I can go up first," she whispered back.

He nodded, keeping his expression flat as he pawed over the keys. "Fourth floor," he said. "Apartment B."

He glanced at his watch. Five forty-seven.

She was already speeding up the stairs, ears swiveling like radio dishes. He followed at a more sedate pace, letting his nose test the air.

The staircase seemed almost foreign—there were grease stains he didn't remember, and also, what on earth were the beavers in 2A planning on doing with the potted _tree_ he'd never before seen on their side of the hall?—but he reasoned that was only because he rarely spared this much thought for his surroundings. Hopps had made him sensitive to the kind of danger that could lurk in even the most ordinary-seeming things, he thought.

When he reached the fourth floor landing, he saw that she'd left the door open. Taking in a sharp breath, he tried to channel the kind of caution he imagined his cousins deployed for their heists before slinking into the apartment.

Quiet, rather uncannily normal—

 _She_ marched out of his bedroom.

"All clear," she said. "Boy, I can't wait to try out your fur-dryer. That is one impressive machine."

Suddenly her cop-posture crumpled, paws falling from her hips and ears flopping like sighs of relief. "Mind if I sit down?"

He shook his head numbly. With an unselfconscious leap, she threw herself onto the sofa, all pretense of searching for potential assassins disappearing in a yawn.

Nick realized that he was staring.

Kitchen, he thought, pivoting on one foot. 

Snuffling around the counters while she watched from _his_ sofa—how much had she seen of his closet? what was she _thinking_? he desperately wanted to know—did not make him feel any less like he was in danger. On the contrary, there was something inherently suspicious about the blueberries and orange peels he'd left to spoil in the garbage. And that scent he was currently tracing with his snout? Deeply unsettling, like the rainforest and oiled carseat and wild—

Right.

Humiliation rushed hot to his ears, and he ducked his head like there was something engrossing on the kitchen floor.

Sniffing out the cop, he thought. Great going, idiot. Because what he _really_ needed was for Hopps to decide he was _that_ kind of predator and subsequently leave him alone here to be _murdered_ the moment her aura of protection abandoned the premises. 

Of course, if _she_ wanted—but no, he thought, she wasn't interested. He would've smelled it, and now he was wondering what _that_ smelled like, because it wasn't like any _other_ rabbit had ever gotten close enough for him to know, and—what the _hell_ , Nick?

First forgetting to keep her out of his closet, then letting in images he needed to bleach-scrub from his brain: clearly, he hadn't thought this through.

Well, it was too late for a hotel. All he could do now was pick up the pieces of his broken mind and—

"This is a really nice couch," she said. 

His ears pricked. 

She'd sounded odd. Hesitant, he thought. 

"Are you _sure_ it's OK if I take a nap here?" she said.

"That's why we're here, Carrots."

Feeling he had mastery over his expression again, he glanced up to see her sitting on the sofa like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. She was also running both paws over the cushions—trying to price the upholstery, he thought.

It made him wonder where she was living. A cop neighborhood like Hogs Neck or Riverside (on the Tundra-Sahara climate wall, affordable and swarming with ZPD and ZFD) wasn't out of the question, but he doubted she had the connections. More likely she'd made the mistake of using a realtor to find something within her budget in Savanna Central. He could just picture it: overpriced dump with slimy walls, bellicose neighbors, and the lovely view of a fire escape. 

Not that his apartment was a dream. The parquet was springy with damage from when the faucet had leaked those three times, the air conditioner spat out fumes reminiscent of poison, and roaches crawled out of the cabinets more often than he cared to admit. But for the location, it was a steal, and more important: it felt, more or less, like home.

"Come on, let's get you set up," he said.

She stood, not quite meeting his eyes. At another time, her behavior might've given him pause, but right then, he didn't exactly want to meet her eyes either. 

Tasks, he reminded himself.

As they pulled out the sleeper, as he dug out sheets and pillows and towels and one of those fifty-cent toothbrushes he kept around for emergencies, Nick found himself retreating into his own thoughts. 

He needed to answer his messages, he'd realized. The thought had jolted something in his heart, and as he imagined himself being judged and found wanting, he felt it start to pound. 

Check, the bed was made. Check, she had towels. Check, he was done here. He'd already pulled out his phone and was in the midst of unlocking it when it occurred to him she was standing right there.

"So, um, you good?" he asked, and heard the impatience in his own tone.

You fool, he thought, watching her frown at the floor. 

"I'll set a few alarms, just in case," he said, realizing with his heartbeat that she wasn't even going to nod. "Oh, and feel free to come through to take a shower. Seriously, anytime, won't bother me."

"Don't you have work?" she asked.

Shit shit shit, she _was_ trying to get rid of him. He felt his tail lurch, but was able to keep his ears erect. "I'm taking vacation," he said, not precisely a lie. 

"Oh." 

Nick was about to launch into a fake, if impassioned defense of his use of vacation days when he heard her deep inhale. Bad sign, he thought, heart screeching into his ears.

She's gonna leave and you're gonna die and for what? For what, genius.

For _nothing_.

"Um, you know that thing we were talking about? About being friends?"

Don't let her see, don't let her see . . . he straightened, plastering on a smile, ignoring how his heart hammered.

"You know you don't have to come with me, right? You've done _so much_ already. See—" and she wrung her paws like they were drenched in guilt, "the thing is, the last time you did, a savage jaguar nearly killed us. And, um—"

Because he had to hide his relief, he decided to play-act exasperation by draping a paw over his eyes.

"Hopps, we've been over this already," he said.

Of course, he now knew what she was thinking. She was thinking: that fox with the trembling paws and the bad temper and the chain-smoking habit, he'd only slow her down. She was thinking: that fox with the silent pounce and big teeth and the scary, scary claws, he'd go savage on her right when she least expected it, because there was no trusting preds anymore. 

Not even the good ones.

Not after what they'd seen. 

As long as she didn't leave, he thought, it didn't matter what she was thinking.

"I'm coming with you, if only for my own sanity," he went on. "Besides, you need me. No more arguments, OK?"

With his eyes and paw still participating in the dramatic pose, he didn't see her coming. Oh no, he thought as he became aware of little arms sneaking around his torso with almost fox-like assurance.

"If I solve this case, it'll be because of you," she murmured into his shirt.

He thought: stay loose, keep those ears and tail relaxed. Make her think she can't hear your heart, that violent simpleton let loose from the insane asylum.

"Sleep well," she said, suddenly pulling back. 

It occurred to him that he should say something, but he had so few ideas. _Don't_ get attached, was the overwhelming consensus, but he couldn't say that aloud.

Not until she'd turned back to the sofa did it hit him: he hadn't so much as _tried_ to reciprocate.

Now she was gonna be mad at him, dammit!

"Uh, you too," he said.

Pathetic, but maybe she was tone-deaf and hadn't noticed?

Dream on, buddy. He rubbed at his eyes for real, then realized she was making a great show of preparing to unbuckle her utility belt. As good as a cue to leave as any, he supposed. 

He shuffled towards his room, too tired to keep his tail from dragging over the ground.

You dumb fox, he thought, pulling out his phone and rubbing at his chest until he sensed an answering pain.

Cut it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nick is talking about [taiyaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiyaki), Japanese waffles shaped like fishes. I modeled his neighborhood on the area around Stuyvesant Street and East 9th (where there also happens to be a taiyaki/takoyaki joint) in NYC.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, this chapter was hard. The original draft of it was the product of several rewrites, and I've rewritten it several times since. If you think it doesn't work, don't hesitate to let me know. I can no longer tell.
> 
> Next chapter moves on to more familiar territory. Thank you for reading!

When Nick lifted his tail from his eyes, the light peeking past the blackout shades on his window seemed a whole lot brighter.

He fumbled for his phone with trembling paws, leaving a hairline scratch on the screen before he managed to hit the on-button. 

(Screen protectors were for the wild and careless and he didn't care if he had a few minute scratches on his screen, he wasn't putting something that announced he was a clawed terror on his phone.)

It was only seven forty-eight.

Well, he wasn't going to risk oversleeping. He turned off his multiple alarms, weighing his options: have a smoke, take a shower, check on Carrots.

_Hopps_.

His ears perked.

If he really strained himself, he could hear her breathing. Slow and even, like she'd fallen into deep sleep.

There was something thrilling about being awake and knowing she wasn't. Nick wanted to go spy on her now.

He'd always been the best of them at snooping. Chuck had realized this early on, made it into something of an unofficial job, and Nick had won the troop countless games of capture the flag with his skill.

He was still that scout, still eager to be told what a good job he'd done, although of course the other teams had screamed bloody murder at him for definitely somehow having cheated. Get your own fox, Chuck had told them. 

Nick hadn't needed to cheat. Sure, he was nimble because he was a predator, but only an idiot relied on natural talent alone. Nick wasn't so lazy. Modulating his step—silencing the giveaway of rapping claws by springing onto his toes and balancing with his tail—hadn't always been this easy. It had taken practice and encouragement from his friends for him to get _this_ good at merging with the shadows. 

He was good, he knew. But was he good enough to get past Hopps? Sneaking up on her was risky. If he surprised her, there was no telling what she might do. A stray kick from her could be fatal.

Now he wanted to test her situational awareness.

Screw the risks, he thought, slipping off the bed in silence. This was a matter of pride.

The living room was considerably brighter than his own, the designer blinds on the windows not doing much work to keep out the morning sun. Light caught strangely in her fur, white and black strands hovering above the rest like ambivalence. She looked peaceful huddled in the blankets.

The closer he crept, the less peaceful she seemed. There was an aspect formidable to her jaw. Her paws had fisted beneath her chin like she was gearing up to land a double punch.

She'd left out her wallet, he noted. It sat on the coffee table like an invitation.

This was too easy.

Rifling through her wallet revealed no surprises. Twenty bucks, a credit card and debit card from the Bunnyburrow Bank, a discount card for Savanna Fare. Right on the money, he thought—now he knew for certain that she lived in Savanna Central.

Better, actually: there was only one Savanna Fare, so he knew roughly _where_ she had to live to consider shopping there. 

Yep, he thought, she lived in a dump.

In a detached plastic sleeve, he found his own business card and three card-sized photographs. The first two seemed to be part of a set. They showed at least one hundred bunnies each, all pressed together on a grassy knoll and bleachers. He couldn't make out more than baseball caps and overalls and carrot-themed skirts and the fuzzy-wuzzy tan and grey blobs of heads and ears, but figured this was her family.

_What animal is best at math?_  
_Rabbits, they multiply fastest!_

Yeah, no, she was probably sick of that joke. 

The third photograph was a close-up shot of Hopps and a much younger girl, both grinning at the camera.

There was only one word for it, he thought, and that was _cute_. Carrots had a very open face, big eyes that popped with color beneath long lashes, a milky mask of fur following her lower jaw and neck that would be fox-like if the rest of her were red, and really clean teeth.

The little girl, he thought: why her of all the rabbits? If _she_ sported a rainbow coat of colorless shades, the girl was tan and beige and unremarkable. Also far too young to be of romantic interest. A favorite sister or cousin? Or—her own kit? 

_Carrots_ as a single mother? No way. No mother would throw herself into danger with that much enthusiasm. Besides, _no_. He'd be able to tell if she had someone special in her life. 

He didn't have to think about it. It was obvious. There wasn't _anyone_. No kit, no boyfriend, no girlfriend. She was the kind of girl, he thought, that you crushed on but _never_ , ever approached. Girls like that—with muscles that put you to shame, with the brains to make you look stupid, who looked past you to dreams of a life out of the ordinary—girls like that approached _you_. A thought, of course, that had probably never crossed her prim-and-proper bunny mind.

That was why she was so vulnerable to overtures of friendship, he thought. Only someone very brave or very stupid or very, very patient would risk entering her orbit for long, and this train of thought was actually going nowhere, and didn't she keep a notebook somewhere?

She didn't have a kit, he repeated to himself, putting the wallet back on the table at the exact angle he'd found it.

He was better at this than he'd thought: she was still very much asleep. And he could see her notebook, stored half-way under the pillow like she'd been reviewing it before shutting her eyes.

He was close enough to touch.

Reaching out with one paw, he mapped the halo of heat radiating out from her fur, trying to judge if she could sense movement.

She gave him too much leeway, he couldn't help but think. Of course he was going to act out of bounds if she let him. He _had_ tried to warn her. Give a fox an in and he'll use it. His friends understood that he needed to be kept on a leash, but Hopps was singularly careless. 

Like this, he could easily kill her. It was trivial to imagine retracting his claws and pouncing, pinning her down with all of his seventy-some pounds, front teeth slotting into place around her neck and . . .

And . . .

One of her ears rose to swat at nothing.

Get away from me, you pervert, he could almost hear her say. 

It's not what you think, he thought. I'm not _that_ kind of fox, except she was right, he was shrinking back with his whole body, horror taking over the thrill.

Unbalanced, one of his claws hit the floor.

He stilled, expecting her to hear that, to hear the rap of his betrayal. With baited breath he waited, paws open like a robber trying to convince the cop he was clean. 

How stupid could you get? He hadn't slipped like this since he was a kit, spying on his parents—and wasn't that a pleasant association. Now he had to remember how, every _single_ time, he'd chosen to sneak up on them when they'd least needed the distraction. How his father's eyes had followed the glint of the needle, how his mother had squinted at the fabric advancing under her paws.

How, for some reason, he'd always found this _hilarious_. Any other kit would've crawled back to bed, delighted in having gone unspotted. Not Nick. Nick had _giggled_ , ending the game, forcing his parents to turn off their machines and look for him.

_Hey squirt!_  
_For heaven's sake, Nick, what did I tell you about good pups staying in bed?_  
_Sweetheart . . . he just wants to be close._  
_He always wants to be close, John—_

They'd been focused, devoted to their craft, and then _he'd_ shown up with those _stupid giggles_ —

Swallowing against the tsunami of shame, he realized he was still standing with his paws out like he actually _wanted_ to give himself away. 

Her nose had started twitching.

Time to disappear, he thought, feeling his heart gain speed. That notebook? Didn't need it. She'd show it to him if he asked prettily enough, and there probably wasn't anything interesting in it anyway—and had he already mentioned it was _way_ past his time to disappear?

Speedy pivot, and he was stealing back to his room.

"Nick?"

Oh, _shit_.

He could feel his muscles freeze, and had to force them to relax. The turn he executed was so clumsy, his tail swept her wallet from the coffee table.

"Shit," he said, diving for the wallet. He caught it right before the sofa.

Her paw met his, and he looked up to see her smiling sleepily. "Nice catch."

He wanted to recoil, but that would look bad. So he settled for sliding the wallet into her paw, then straightening slowly enough that she dropped her paw on her own. 

"I didn't mean to wake you," he said. 

"I'm glad you did," she said, rubbing at her eyes with the wallet-free paw.

If he'd been asked to predict what Hopps would be like in the morning, his answer would've been: like a military cadet. He could picture it even now. Ears shooting straight to the ceiling. How she'd examine the room from a crouched position, assessing it for potential danger. Then stand—no, _leap_ to the floor, paws flying to her hips on the landing. Ready to make the world a better place? her posture would say.

In the reality playing out before him, she was doing none of those things. She was yawning, paws running across the edge of her blanket like she hadn't quite processed what it was. "I was afraid of oversleeping," she said.

She sat up a little, then looked at him, and he saw the moment her brain kicked in and she began to wonder why he'd been standing there in the first place.

"I thought you might be pretending to sleep," he said, making it sound like he was blurting out the words from embarrassment.

Her expression shifted into something like guilt. "It must be so weird for you to have me blocking your living room like this," she said, pushing aside the covers and angling her feet towards the floor. 

She'd gone to sleep wearing only her undershirt and boxers, and he felt his eyes widen at the sight of her legs. While not exactly hidden by her uniform, it was something else altogether to see naked fur.

She was a living, breathing animal with white-tipped toes and fur begging to be stroked and legs that could kill him if she ever got them around his neck.

She was also gathering the pillow and blankets to herself with the kind of concentration that signaled high levels of awkwardness. "I'll get this stuff out of the way," she said.

He blinked his eyes into submission, feeling his tail swish behind him with the effort. 

"Don't worry about it," he said, and _finally_ : the stretch of his automatic smile kicking in to do its job. "I was gonna make some coffee—want some?"

"That sounds great," she said. 

There was something a little forced to _her_ smile, he thought, but maybe it wasn't worth questioning. Maybe a little distance would do them both good.

As soon as the coffee was made, he decided, he was going to shower and smoke at least two cigarettes. Get out of her fur and get her out of his, before he went and did something truly moronic. Before this day got any worse. 

_Good foxes don't play after bed-time,_ his mother used to say. He took out the coffee press.

*

Nick _stank_ to his own nose. Rain and time had dispersed most of it, but fear was a potent scent.

Fox-reek compared favorably only to skunk, as he was well aware. Hopps was either too demure or polite to mention it, but there was no way her rabbit-nose hadn't picked it up on him.

He didn't care what she thought, he told himself, he just wanted it _gone_. Showering helped against accumulated oils and dirt, helped soften and de-scent his fur, but his tail was a different story. 

Once, he'd consulted with a surgeon about having his violet gland removed. The surgeon had said it was a very risky procedure that would cripple him for life. A lie, of course: there were pills to regulate what was lost. It was the _expression_ on the surgeon's face that had made him reconsider, the expression that had said: what kind of male _are_ you.

So Nick had done the next best thing and invested in the best fur products and cologne. As long as he didn't set off his fear-scent, artificial fragrances were enough to overpower the rest.

He even enjoyed grooming. He liked turning the fox in the mirror into someone dashing and mysterious. He _loved_ smelling of sandalwood and cardamom, mandarin and amber, vetiver and heliotrope.

Catching sight of himself in the mirror now, still fluffy from the fur-dryer, he could almost see his father. Bigger than he was, a lot heavier too, but they had the same nose and facial bone structure, as his mother liked to say.

Nick couldn't remember his father's face with any clarity, but he'd never forget his scent. Fox and that cheap musk-mask that smelled like lemonade, and when Nick had been seven—or maybe eight, what _mattered_ was that it'd been the same year as the crash—his father had taken out a spray-can of the stuff and showed him how to apply it. He remembered how his father had insisted on using as little as possible, how he'd claimed it was still enough to make them smell good. He remembered being annoyed by the thrift. 

If only his father had been a little less oblivious—

Not going there, Nick thought, blasting the base of his tail with maybe seventy-bucks worth of the world's most expensive perfume.

Carrots was making little noises out in the living room, and he imagined she was thumping her foot in impatience at how long he was taking.

A bitter surge. 

Dad would've loved _her_.

The cologne bottle was slippier than he remembered; he had to scrabble not to drop it. Scowling his own reflection, he put away the bottle and his brushes and the foam that made his fur sleek and shiny.

Prowled into his closet. Before falling asleep, he'd rearranged a few items to keep them hidden from prying eyes. Now he was disoriented. Ugh, he thought, slipping on the first dark button-up he found. 

Tie or bowtie? Tie, but coordination took so much _effort_ , and it was hard enough fighting the exhaustion that had started to pull down on his ears. He eyed the collection of already-knotted neckties accumulating on his bedpost. 

Not good enough for work, but for Carrots, it would have to do. The first one on the post, and he slid up the four-in-paw and adjusted it against his collar.

He didn't want to see her.

He had to see her, so he pushed open the door and entered the living room.

Hopps, he discovered, had folded the bed linens and restored the sofa to its upright position. She was sipping coffee and leaning against one of the kitchen counters, her eyes fixed on her phone.

"Shower's free," he said.

She glanced up, except that she didn't: her eyes stopped on his chest.

"What?" he said. 

Her expression lightened. "Nice shirt," she said, and there was a distinctly smirk-like curl to her mouth.

What the hell, he thought. And he glanced down to realize he was wearing one of _dad's shirts_ , the dark blue one with black spaceships in the print, effing black _spaceships_ , and he never should've let his mother bring them over and he'd thought they were hanging way at the back of the closet where he'd never have to see them again, and this was an actual _disaster_ , and—

*

Nick was a little messy, Judy was beginning to realize. His apartment wasn't huge, but it was a lot bigger than hers, and he'd filled every available inch of wall-space with shelves that sagged under the weight of all the things he'd collected. Books were the primary culprit, followed by music and films, but if there was a common theme between them she couldn't see it. 

_How to Solve It_ , noir detective novels, _Beyond Good and Evil_ , really old video games, films with _subtitles_ , _The Theory of Color_ , every kind of music on CD except for the pop she liked, vegetarian cookbooks, _Leaves of Grass_ , tattered textbooks on odd subjects like logic and differential equations, illustrated volumes of myths . . . his tastes ran to the exotic, she thought, catching sight of figurines that looked to be standing guard on the shelves. A jackal carved of ebony wood. A brass dragon.

A fox of white silk, gleaming in the sunlight, and she had to wonder whether foxes told the same stories she'd grown up hearing.

From the bedroom came a whirring sound, and she realized Nick must've started up his fur-dryer. Her time to inspect his apartment was nearing an end.

He'd been so strange earlier, she thought. Hovering over her like her parents back when she'd fallen from the twisty tree and broken her leg. Dad had cried when he'd thought she was sleeping, and she suspected he'd been thinking of all the children who hadn't had her luck, the sisters and brothers who'd drowned and gotten caught in machinery and swallowed poison, the sisters and brothers her parents had been forced to bury.

What Nick's excuse was, she didn't know. She really didn't know him very well, was what it made her think.

She turned from the shelves to examine the remainder of wall. For someone who owned designer furniture, the amount of ugly things he kept around was astonishing. A Pawaiian ukulele rested on a stand next to a red and lime electric guitar. The aquamarine silhouette of what she thought was Stinger sewing machine stood out under a thin sheet. Pots, many of them brown and misshappen, lined the tops of more shelves bursting with _stuff_. He'd also put up some artwork, almost all of it baffling.

Baffling, because it wasn't exactly impressive. One painting was green and yellow at the bottom, with an asymmetrical red blotch floating in the middle and thick streaks of blue towards the top. Judy felt she could've produced something similar in her sleep. 

She tried to imagine what Nick saw in it. Fire erupting in fields? A patch of poppy flowers? . . . truth be told, the whole thing was so abstract she didn't know _what_ to picture other than a bunch of wiggly lines.

Nothing he owned reminded her of home, and it occurred to her that maybe she was baffled for that reason. 

The glazed plates hanging in the kitchen, for instance, could not be _further_ away from Bunnyburrow porcelain than a bull compared to a china-doll. Made of coarse, uneven ceramic and painted in audaciously bright colors, they had three-dimensional shapes protruding from the centers: a crab, red as though it had been boiled; a fish with its mouth gaping open and a real glass eye. 

The frozen display left her uneasy, and not only because it reminded her that she was standing in a predator's kitchen. It was the lack of expression to their insect faces, she thought.

She could hear him moving to his closet, and went to check on the coffee he'd made her earlier. Still warm in its mug, and no longer too hot to drink: perfect.

There was nothing wrong with expressing his predator nature in art, she told herself. His tastes simply . . . ran to the exotic.

Eight twenty, her phone told her. Zoogle Maps calculated it would take ten to reach City Hall with the subway. She opened the _Zootopian Times_ app, expecting he would appear any moment now.

By the time he actually appeared, she'd decided to let him make the first move, that she wasn't going to be a more annoying guest than she already was, even though she was growing _very impatient_ and _desperate for a shower_.

"Shower's free," he said.

Sweet cheese and crackers finally, she thought, looking up from an article she hadn't really had the focus to read.

Shower forgotten, because when she was right she felt electric with certainty, and she'd been _right_ to call him exotic, because that was _exactly_ how he was dressed. The Pawaiian shirt challenged the slick image she'd cultivated of him previously, not least because he wore it untucked. 

It was also semi-transparent and short-sleeved, leaving his arms exposed to the sun.

She caught her own interest in the gold and black before it could show, focusing on the shirt instead. Blue and black, as unprofessional as could be, it actually clashed with _itself_ , she thought.

"Nice shirt," she said.

"What?"

She had to smirk. As sleazy as the shirt might look in theory, on Nick, it softened some of the edges. Maybe it was the tie that also clashed with everything, that made him look less like a casino owner and more like he was actually the mind behind this weird eclectic mess of a luxury apartment.

He almost looked _nerdy_ , she thought, which was saying something, because normally he was pretty much the exact opposite.

Something seemed to click with him, and he glanced down, and she wondered if he'd even been aware of what he was wearing. "I can't wear this," he said, voice rising at the end like he was panicking.

"Why not? It suits you."

He looked at her like she'd betrayed him. "That's a low blow, Carrots."

Nick's expression suggested he wasn't playacting, that this was as unpleasant for him as a rising sour memory, so she put down the coffee mug. "You said I could use the shower?"

"Sorry, I need to change," he said, paws already reaching up to loosen his tie, and before she could even try and convince him otherwise, he'd disappeared back into his room.

Gee, she thought, talk about _sensitive_ —

*

Once out of the shirt, he felt a little better. It helped that she was in the shower, that he had some space for his private crisis. 

Lung cancer really didn't sound so bad, he thought, opening the window above the fire escape.

*

The air in Nick's bathroom was pervaded with product and cologne. Not the greatest surprise, but having to breathe through all that wood and citrus made her wonder. 

Judy knew what fox smelled like. Foxes in Bunnyburrow still scent-marked, and she and her siblings had learned early on to keep away from that turf. Gideon looming over her, reeking of fox—she'd never forget that. 

She also thought she'd never forget Nick's fear-scent. Not because it had smelled unpleasant; because it had been her fault, and because it triggered her sense of shame.

Did he know that? Was that why the bathroom didn't even _remotely_ smell of fox?

On her own fur, his shampoo felt caustic. She kept her shower as brief as possible, then bit her lip through a scalding from his high-tech fur-dryer. She'd known his fur was thicker and coarser, and expected there to be some difference, but the settings he'd chosen approached masochism.

Behind his mirror, he kept an assortment of brushes, some twenty different products, and a large gold bottle with lettering proclaiming it THE WORLDS MOST EXPENSIVE PERFUME.

Was it because of the smoking? she wondered.

Well, if his things were so expensive, she wasn't going to touch them. She closed the mirror.

Unbrushed, fur cooked to a crinkle, dressed in all but her utility belt, she returned to the living room to find that the apartment now reeked of cigarettes.

She hadn't paid attention to his new shirt when he'd first put it on, her focus being on getting into the shower as speedily as possible, but now that she could get a proper look, she found herself disappointed.

All the endearing quirkiness was gone. He was back to looking like a rogue.

"The other shirt was better," she said.

*

"No it wasn't," he said.

Not that he cared. He was too busy being amused by the fact that Hopps literally took less time to get ready in the mornings than he needed to de-scent his tail. 

Honestly, Nick was feeling a _lot_ calmer. He'd managed to answer the most pressing emails in his inbox; Chuck was actually pleased with him, and it was like a weight had been lifted from his chest.

He headed into the kitchen, relaxed enough to let his claws touch the floor, and heard her follow.

"Take whatever you want," he told her, gesturing at the refrigerator in a sudden onset of generosity.

"I'm actually starving," she admitted.

If he'd been amused before, that was nothing next to what he felt now. Hopps had quickly become distracted by his refrigerator, and was rummaging through the shelves with the concentration of an excavator. Her butt poked out the door, which was the best part. Nick leaned onto a counter with one elbow, smirking at the little wiggle her tail gave when she found something.

"What's this?" she asked, holding up a box of inari zushi he'd gotten as a snack.

A week ago. From that super-skeazy market that didn't clear the shelves of products over their best-sell date.

"Fox stuff," he said, snatching it away and holding it above her head.

Unmoved, she'd already gone back to nosing through the fridge. "Is that _champagne_?"

He rolled his eyes: she was probably thinking of those superstitions about how you could kill a fox with alcohol. Or onions. Or chocolate. Basically with any one of his favorite foods. 

Sometimes, it was like the world thought they'd never evolved.

"Carrots," he said. "You wanna make it to City Hall sometime this morning?"

"Right, right," she said, although she was still engrossed by the options before her. Nick didn't keep a lot of food around, but she'd clearly never seen most of what he _did_ have. "What's in this?"

He squinted at a dessert he'd bought a few days ago now from that bakery on Murray Street, only to promptly forget about.

"Chestnuts," he said. "Oh, and almond milk. Can you eat, uh—" Nuts, he'd been about to say, only to decide better of it.

"Sure," she said, grinning with more energy than he knew what to do with.

Breakfast decided upon, her tail did a little victory dance. 

It was too much, what with the nut joke still echoing in his head. He _had_ to smile.

*

The contents of Nick's refrigerator were as exotic as the rest of the place, and although he was clearly not a morning person, she felt warmth and a surge of protectiveness towards this prickly and unstable but also generous being who'd opened up to her in a way no-one ever had. 

Chestnut puree and almond cream and she felt like she was _floating_ from the sugar rush. She felt like she could take on anything, and that Nick was somehow responsible.

Yes, he was something of a scoundrel, yes, she barely knew him, but he still felt like her first city friend, she thought, spooning the last of the dessert into her mouth.

Her first _adult_ friend period, she amended, watching him prepare something with a knife at the counter and thinking back to his words on the gondola platform, cutting and visceral and heaven-sent.

"Passion fruit?" he said, giving her a spoon and a large bulbous pod sliced open to expose creamy yellow fruit and slick seeds, and she beamed, because being encouraged to try new things was exactly what she wanted—what she _needed_ —in a friend.

"You're the best," she said.

"Don't grow those at home?" he asked, watching her scarf it down with a wry expression.

Yes, he sounded condescending, but she was starting not to mind. "Wrong climate," she said, and since he didn't seem outright dismissive, told him a little bit about the crops they actually did raise other than carrots while he picked at whatever weird kind of sushi it was he liked.

Together, she thought, they could do this.

*

Her utility belt was on, he thought they were _finally_ ready to go, and—

"Wait," she said, and he realized she was unclipping the canister from its holster.

Not this again.

He disliked how his shoulders had tensed. Rotated them like he was trying to get a kink out. 

She held out the fox repellant, her expression apologetic, but firm. "I want to throw this out," she said.

Feeling his brow tighten, he took it from her paw. It felt weightless in his own, like a can of string confetti.

He'd never seen one of these up close. The label was almost interesting. A stylized face announced the danger: pricked ears, slitted yellow eyes. There were specific instructions explaining where to aim, at what distance, and what to expect.

"It's basically pepper spray," he said, letting this weigh on her—all she'd bought for twice the price was prejudice—before sliding a claw up the label to cut through it vertically. Like a cheap plastic top, it fell to the ground. 

He'd expected it to fall flat. Instead, it spun for a good moment, settling with the stylized face glaring at him from upside-down.

He tossed the canister into the air. Caught it.

"Here," he said, offering it back.

She shook her head. "I'm never touching that stuff again."

"Never say never," he said, and saw her eyes narrow. "Come on, what if another mammal goes savage? This 'stuff' could save the day."

"I promised—"

"Yeah, you know what, that was pretty stupid," he said. "Come on, Hopps, we both know you need this."

"Whatever you're trying to prove, it's not working," she said. "I made a vow. I'm _keeping_ it."

When her ears rose up like that, like a threat, there was very little he could do.

"Do you actually have a death wish?" he asked. There was something ugly building in his chest, like baby spiders committing matriphagy, like baby spiders molting beside the exoskeleton of the mother they'd drained for food. He wasn't sure why he was picturing spiders and why he was angry, but there it was.

Now her ears were twisting backward. She was grinding her teeth, and he could just imagine what that felt like, could just picture the inside of her skull, the bones vibrating with fury, and what it would feel like against the spines of his tongue.

"Throw it away or keep it yourself," she said. "But leave _me_ out of it."

And with that, she pushed past him out the door.

Nick swallowed. 

She barreled down the stairs.

"Hey," he said, "you _promised_ not to leave without me!"

There was no answer except for the diminuendo of her feet thumping against wood. She was at least two stories down, he thought. She would wait for him in the foyer, he thought.

Leave me out of it, she'd said.

The decision was easy. He pocketed the canister, ignoring the spiders, ignoring the new set of crawlers slinking up his throat with shame. It was only a precaution, he told himself. 

She gave him too much leeway, but on the other paw: if he didn't do the thinking, she _would_ get them both killed. 

Besides. Without the label, it was only pepper spray.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your wonderful feedback on the last chapter. I've revised some of it since the initial posting, particularly Judy's perspective (she no longer uses the c-word!) and the ending. The gist remains the same, but nuances are different. That chapter continues to present a struggle, so I suspect I'll go back to it again. Thank you for your patience!
> 
> _This_ chapter feels like a big risk. I'm grateful for all suggestions and comments. Thank you so much for reading.

Judy hadn't planned on _giving_ him the fox repellant.

Showing it to him, that was all she'd wanted. She'd wanted him to see that she intended to fulfill her promise. She'd _planned_ on throwing it into the first dumpster they came across.

She'd thought they were approaching something like a real friendship. She'd thought they were making real progress.

All sugar and cream. All pretty, airy _facade_. Because he'd taken her promise, thrown it into the air like a juggling ball, and tried to bully her into breaking it.

She didn't understand him at all, she realized. She didn't know anymore if she _wanted_ to understand him.

Nick came down the stairs with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his ears flattened against his head, and she wondered—was it a pose? The way his muzzle angled towards the ground, the glare aimed at his plodding feet—did it signify _anything_?

"You sure took your time," she said.

Snap of his sharp head, and the glare zeroed in on her. There was a droop to his eyelids, but whether it was exhaustion or more of his sarcasm, she couldn't say.

She felt a little remorse, then, because he _hadn't_ gotten a lot of sleep.

"I think we should take the subway, don't you?" she asked, mostly because she didn't want him putting out ridiculous amounts of money for a cab again. Also, she didn't want to deal with his inevitable disapproval of her country-bunny habits: she never tipped more than ten-percent, and he seemed to think thirty-percent was the absolute minimum, and the _last_ thing she needed this morning was an argument over money.

He smiled.

That should've been her clue, she thought, grinding her teeth as they fought their way to the 6 train. Getting to the doors was hard enough: the platform was so crowded and hot she began to worry that animals would faint and be crushed or knocked onto the tracks. The train doors presented an ordeal of their own, blocked by a rhino who was unwilling to budge for incoming traffic. Even the space between his legs was packed with smaller mammals, and she had to push past a _hedgehog_ to get inside. Only to find that every seat was occupied, that the poles were being hogged by grass-munching wildebeests, and that the sole place for her to stand was right next to a tiger and a skunk.

She had nothing to hold onto but herself.

Nick _must have known_ it would be like this.

The moment she got her hands on that fox, she thought. He'd agreed to her ill-advised plan on purpose, she thought, watching him sidle into a pocket of space between a mara and a koala with a smile greasier than black petroleum. 

The train started with a sudden lurch, and she flailed, grabbing the skunk as an anchor. _He_ only sashayed his tail, making the effort of surfing a moving train-car look like child's play. The smirk he sent her way only confirmed in her mind that he was enjoying watching her step all over that poor skunk's feet. 

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry—"

The skunk took note of her badge and forced a smile.

Their stop was only a few minutes away, and she settled into a teeth-gritting routine of trying to counteract momentum with her tail and toes. If Nick was laughing at her, she pretended not to see it.

When the doors finally opened into their station, she turned to the skunk with all the sincerity she could muster. "I am _really_ sorry about that," she said. The skunk's eyes were bulging at the corners, like he thought she was crazy and was reflecting that back.

No time to explain. The doors—she could hear the hydraulics shifting, which meant they were closing. She pivoted, shoving past the slowpoke hedgehog to leap out just in time.

Nick stood on the platform, nonchalant as could be.

"Remind me never to take you dancing," he said. She opened her mouth to protest, but then he put a paw on her elbow like he was trying to guide her or something, and that got her wondering where she was being guided.

Away from a conversation about his behavior, she decided. 

She wasn't sure what to say about it herself. She wanted an apology. She also felt guilty for wanting an apology, because the fox repellant was really on _her_ , only . . . and now she was thinking of their bizarre conversation in the sky tram, all the things he'd said that hadn't made any sense. His claws had dug into her shoulders as he'd shook them, as he'd looked straight into her like he was afraid, and—what had made him so afraid?

Friendship was hard, she thought, and suddenly found it easy to blame herself. She'd never had a friend for longer than two years. What was it she was doing _wrong_?

There was a catch in her throat, and if she didn't deactivate it at once, tears would follow. She swallowed and put her concentration into her eyes, shifting focus from internal to external surroundings.

City Hall was less impressive up-close than at a distance. When you lost sight of its grand spire and symbolic waterfall, what met your gaze was something like decline. 

Judy could see trash accumulating around the front steps and several instances of pred-gang graffiti. The revolving doors were smeared with grime and paw-prints. What once had been a white marble facade was now yellow from exposure to the air, and a brown trail down its length mapped years of drip from an air-conditioner's pipe. 

As she moved towards the steps, she saw Nick inhale like he was a diver intending to swim under a rock passage. Soon she wished she'd followed suit. The air had developed an unpleasant undertone: sitting water from the bed of the waterfall, putrid musk and sweat from the homeless leopard squatting behind one of the entryway columns, and worst of all, the whiff of sewage stuck in pipes too old to handle today's levels.

Strange to think of all that waste wafting up from the city's underbelly to strike its representative heart.

Nick exhaled at the doors. He pushed them into a spin.

"After you," he said.

He knew this place, she realized.

They walked to the security checkpoint in silence, only the tap of Nick's claws against the floor offering insight into his thoughts (he seemed relaxed, she thought). Judy noted several double-takes at her uniform, and lifted her chin against them. Not even the security guards manning the metal detector seemed prepared to take her seriously: as she put her badge and belt under the X-Ray scanner, she saw the raise of eyebrows.

"Haven't seen you in a while," said one of the guards from behind.

She spun around. 

The guard—a grey wolf—was grinning at Nick.

Who grinned back. "I've been busy."

"Too busy to give me your number?"

"Dream on, big boy," said Nick, batting the air with a limp wrist. Behind him, his tail seemed to preen.

Somehow, her heart seemed to have found its way to her ears.

"You know you want to," murmured the wolf.

"You can come on through, officer," said the guard on the other side of the metal detector.

Turn around, she told herself. Straighten those shoulders.

She walked through the detector with a posture becoming of an officer, but there was nothing to be done about how her vision had blurred at the edges, about the feeling that all sensation had drained from her paws. 

Her badge and belt emerged from the scanner, and she moved towards them without seeing more than basic shapes. 

So Nick was into men, she thought. Big deal. Her favorite sister was married to a doe. Luke had been courting that pika for _years_. 

It was perfectly normal.

(penny swiftfoot, sleek as a boy, a dream on the track)

Really, she should've guessed, she thought. He was a bachelor who liked being a bachelor. No long term attachments, she thought: for all the clutter in his apartment, she hadn't seen a single picture frame. And there'd been no overlooking the fine sheets on his bed, those dresses gleaming from between all the suits in his closet, the _four bottles_ of champagne in his fridge.

Maybe it was a relief, she thought, closing her belt over her waist. It meant she didn't have to take his flirtatiousness seriously. It was a good thing. Made things easier. 

Less for her to worry about.

As Nick made it to her side, she mustered a smile. His expression remained unchanged: somewhere between a smirk and a grin, like he couldn't decide whether to laugh at her or laugh at her some more.

She didn't mind, she told herself. He kept her honest.

Too bad she couldn't trust him to be completely honest with her.

They walked into an elevator, and she tried to watch him without his noticing, knowing it was a futile task. Nick's vision wasn't as good as hers, she suspected, but he was far better at reading intent than any bunny in her acquaintance.

The elevator doors closed with a ping. Judy pressed the button to the top floor.

The cabin rose with a wobble. 

She watched from the corner of her eye as his paws slipped deeper into his pockets. As he jangled keys. 

"You've been here before," she said.

He looked at the ceiling with that red, red muzzle and evergreen mind, and she wished she could read his thoughts. 

"Work," he said, like that was an explanation. 

"Work?"

"Our firm supported Lionheart's campaign," he said, making it sound like a concession. "And when he appointed Bellwether, we set up a little party for her. You know how it is."

No she didn't. 

At least he'd tacitly given her permission to openly stare at him, she thought, _staring_ at him with the realization that she really knew _nothing_ about him. " _You_ know Bellwether?" 

That wasn't even the question she really wanted to ask. Why was a hedge fund involved in city politics? Why would _Nick_ help set up a party for the _assistant_ mayor? What kind of _work_ did he even do?

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "I told you," he said, the only sign of irritation his flicking tail. "I know everyone."

"Someday you're gonna have to explain how that works," she said, trying to imply the unasked questions with her tone.

He merely continued to smile.

Judy felt her mouth twist, because while he seemed to think games of omission were perfectly good fun, she felt like she was staring at him from the other side of a fence, shut out from the real punchline.

"Why didn't you say so before?" she asked, because now that she thought about it, she'd definitely mentioned Bellwether in his presence. He'd never once indicated he even knew who she _was_.

"I'm telling you now, aren't I?"

"Sure, but—"

Too late, Judy realized that the elevator had been slowing down. It pinged at that moment, the doors opening to what she saw was the twentieth floor. 

A ram walked in, carrying a cup of coffee. He smelled of wool rarely washed, that oily film that accumulated on the strands and stiffened the curls. 

As the doors closed, he stepped into Judy's space like she wasn't there, forcing her to flatten herself against the wall.

Sheep could look backward without moving their heads. She _knew_ he could see her, or at very least feel her body heat, trapped up behind him. " _Excuse_ me—"

"Nicky," said the ram, eyes swiveling to the side with what Judy thought was a deliberate show of apathy. "Haven't seen you in a while."

"Nice to see you too, Curdworth," said Nick, his voice absolutely pleasant. 

"You here to see Dawn?"

The ram's fleece protruded from his clothes, there was so much of it. She had to stand on her toes to see Nick past the silhouette of it all.

"Would I come all this way for anyone else?" asked Nick, tail curling around his legs. A red-and-black snake winding down a tree, she thought, and the opportunity to watch him with his attention directed elsewhere was so rare, she almost couldn't resent the ram for making her fight for it. 

Take Nick's paws, for instance. They trembled in his pockets, but Judy now knew not to read anything into them. Far more interesting were his ears, slanted at an angle that bespoke discomfort.

The ram gave off a grunt that she could only assume was a laugh. "Glad to see she's appreciated," he said. 

The elevator was slowing down again. Judy glanced up at the floor display on the bar over the doors.

Floor _thirty_? she thought, her anger at the ram renewed. They still had forty-five more to go!

Ping, and the doors opened. 

"See you around, Nicky," said Curdworth.

"Take care," said Nick, so pleasant it made her teeth hurt.

Curdworth waddled out of the cabin. The moment his eyes flicked forward, Judy jumped over to the controls and slammed the close-door button with the base of her paw.

The grinding of gears, the winding of cables, a pitch forward that reminded her of sailing lessons on the Bunnyburrow lake. Then they were moving again.

Nick continued smiling at the doors.

She felt her eyes narrow.

She was tired of being treated like a joke. Like she was invisible. Like she didn't deserve respect. Like she was less than a friend, like she was someone useful but not worthy of trust. Judy had accepted the inevitable: she'd be turning in her badge in a few hours. But she also wasn't going to give up before her last second had passed. 

And not even that would stop her, she told herself. Even without her dream job, she'd keep striving to prove that she was more than what everyone seemed to think she was.

Nick, she was beginning to realize, stood for the very opposite philosophy.

"Why does everyone call you that?" she asked.

She looked straight to his ears. As she watched, one fell back while the other shifted forward. When the pyramids pulled apart like levers, she knew he was on his guard.

" _Nicky_ ," she went on, pretending he'd asked for clarification. "Like you're a kid."

Like Nicky was a distinct category, she found herself thinking. Like Nicky wasn't _Nick_ , but some fantastic creature who was great to look at and laugh with but who also required careful supervision. 

Like rabbits, because rabbits were cute and all, but they didn't have what it took to be police officers. That made sense in her mind. 

"It's just a pet name," he said through that implacable smile.

"A pet name?" she repeated. "That _everyone_ uses?"

"Yeah, because I like it." 

"You _like_ being treated like a pet?"

"You know what I'd like? Your nose out of my business."

His smile was gone. She was satisfied to see it gone, to see his upper lip curled away from two glinting carnassials. The wrinkle formed atop his muzzle. She was getting to him, was what it meant.

It meant she still needed to press.

"Right, _Nicky_ ," she said. "Because that's what friends do. Pretend there's nothing wrong with their friends."

His tail morphed into a dragon, black head rearing to strike. "Yes, that's _exactly_ what friends do. Oh, sorry, I forgot: you're still new to this, aren't you."

She wasn't afraid of those teeth. She wasn't afraid of that tail. She was afraid, but not of the _fox_.

"You're hiding something," she said, glaring into green. "You're afraid."

"You sound like a broken record," he said.

" _You_ —"

Ping.

Nick's scowl became a smile. His tail became a slinking line. As it dwindled in size, he slouched, like there were no cares in this world.

The doors opened.

You're acting like a coward, she thought and no longer dared to say.

Eyes facing forward as though there were nothing to see, he walked out the elevator with the strut of absolute confidence.

Judy drew in a breath. This was _not_ over, she told herself. 

A new thought intruded. Friendship wasn't her primary job, it said. She had to keep that in mind, it said. She'd gone for years without friends, hadn't she? 

It wasn't even like she'd be in Zootopia much longer, it said. The likelihood of solving this case before Bogo demanded her badge was growing exponentially smaller by the second.

But—

_No buts_. Nick was a distraction. If he wanted to be treated like whatever it was _Nicky_ implied, that was his decision. Judy knew plenty of rabbits who thought she was silly for protesting the stereotype of the cute bunny. She _despised_ those rabbits. If that was the kind of animal Nick really was, maybe he wasn't actually a friend she needed.

But she felt like something had died and petrified in her stomach as she stepped onto the mayor's floor.

*

Judy was rounding a corner, Nick slinking alongside her, when she saw something so unthinkable, it would take her hours to process it: doors slamming on the assistant mayor, who ran straight into them like their closing was the last thing she'd expected.

Binders and papers, stacked so precariously she'd later think they'd been meant to fall, flew from Bellwether's arms. Without pausing to wonder what had happened, Judy rushed forward. 

Nick's claws echoed a jog from behind.

She skidded down onto her knees. Bellwether was crouched on all fours, picking up papers with her ears folded down, her posture small and defeated.

Judy bent down to gather up a binder.

"Nicky?" Bellwether asked.

Judy had been about to straighten up and speak; now she froze. "What are you doing here?" Bellwether went on.

"What, I can't visit my favorite ewe?" he said, and although Judy couldn't see his expression, she _could_ hear Bellwether's breathy answering _giggle_.

No, she thought. 

She made the mistake of glancing up from the mess on the floor. Bellwether had her hooves to her mouth and was looking at Nick with the kind of intensity Judy liked to think she reserved solely for meals after marathons.

_No_ , she thought.

But—the wolf—

You know what? Judy told herself, because her mind was retching in a wretched place, because these thoughts were best shoved into an abyss. What mattered now was the case.

Right. Because if her time in the city had taught her anything, it was that split-second calls tended to come back to _bite_ her in the butt. 

She'd reserve her judgment for later. 

Good call. Except that _Nicky_ had so much to answer for, and—

It was getting easier to pretend she felt nothing. In this, he was rubbing off on her. "Assistant Mayor Bellwether?" she asked, painting her eyes big and sincere. 

Bellwether turned in acknowledgment, and Judy was relieved to see a return to professionalism. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "We need your help," she said.

"Oh, anything," said Bellwether. She adjusted glasses too large for her with the clumsy shyness of a schoolgirl. The move sent the bell around her neck ringing.

"Is that a new necklace?" Nick asked, sounding like a bad one-night stand.

"Oh, Nicky, it's _so_ like you to notice."

"It's pretty."

(penny with clive fangwood, malicious locker room talk, _look at jealous judy_ )

She had to fight her instinct to cringe. Binders, binders, pick up all the binders.

Bellwether led them into a very dark, very cramped room with _boilers_ in it that seemed more like a humiliation chamber than an office. Judy tried to take those details in, tried to recalibrate her understanding of City Hall with them in mind. Tried to appreciate the fact that she didn't have to grovel for this favor. 

Really, she was very grateful to be given unlimited access to the Jam Cams. 

She did not at all regret coming here. At all.

Only—why was Bellwether sneaking passes at Nick's _tail_?

"Smellwether!"

Nothing made sense anymore, Judy thought, listening to Mayor Lionheart yell over the speakerphone. She tried to meet Nick's eyes, hoping _he'd_ at least give her some sort of signal she could understand, but he was ignoring her, eyes darting everywhere except to her.

Bellwether made to leave, her shoulders collapsed. Not even Judy could deny there was something sweet and compelling about her expression.

"This was so nice, Judy," she said, and Judy would've beamed and said something in kind, except that Bellwether had already turned to Nick, and was now lightly _running her hoof_ over Nick's arm—

"It was wonderful to see you again, Nicky—"

Was it wrong to be glad when Lionheart thundered a warning through the speakerphone, sending her scrambling out the door? 

The moment Judy could no longer hear scampering hooves was the same moment she lost her ability to hold back. "How can you _stand_ it?" she asked.

"How can I stand your meddling? Good question."

He was deflecting, she decided. "It's not like _you'd_ touch a sheep's wool," she said, because in her mind, there was a big difference between holding paws and touching someone's _tail_. "You're not a petting zoo, Nick, so why do let them treat you like one?"

His smile was so thin and mean, she had to wonder if the fox who'd stood up for her at her darkest hour had merely been a hallucination.

"Maybe not a sheep's _wool_ , but I'd totally . . ." and suddenly he became a blur.

A tug from behind.

The flash of nerves, shock reaching the backs of her eyes like little bolts. "Did you just _yank my tail_?"

"Yep," he said, settling back with a horrifying display of canines. "Are you happy now?"

The yank hadn't been gentle. It had felt possessive, invasive, like a punishment. "Who _are_ you," she said, feeling something black shift in her, something cold.

"I'm your friend who's helping you," he said. "What, do friends not get to touch friends?"

"Not like that," she said in a voice that was thick. "There are these things called _boundaries_ , ever heard of them?"

"You should be asking yourself that question," he said, utterly remorseless. A flick of thumb, his paw flipping towards the door. "That stuff between me and her? It's none of your business."

"But—"

"I _like_ her," he said, and she knew she wasn't imagining the color of hostility. "Is that a crime now? Does it upset your delicate bunny sensibilities to imagine a _fox_ with another species?" 

"What?" Did he really think her so small-minded? "No!"

"Then leave it alone," he said with a snarl.

She was speechless. She was convinced that all of this boiled down to one of his _acts_ , and that if she could only shake him up enough, he'd come out and admit it. Yet he was resisting her every step of the way, turning this on _her_ , making this ugly and hurtful and humiliating.

First that wolf, now Bellwether. Oh, and Ed, and the ram in the elevator, and—surely this wasn't Nick's _life_?

Maybe it was. Maybe he liked it. Maybe he liked ugliness, and hurt, and humiliation.

She turned to the computer screen, if only to fight the catch in her throat.

"Right," she said past the pressure. "I forgot, nothing ever gets to you."

A few clicks later, during which she mastered her desire to glance over at him, and she had their jaguar.

Seeing Manchas again drew her out of her thoughts, starting new and frightening ones by reminding her of the deeply uncomfortable implications of the case. If she hadn't watched him go savage herself, she'd never really have believed it possible.

The screen now showed Judy slipping, falling off the edge of the platform. Nick racing to the edge, thinking she was still behind him.

"Can you fast forward?" he asked, shifting his weight between his feet. The movement brought him a step closer.

She complied, and couldn't help but take in a breath of him. The scent of him so near was heady, but it wasn't frightening, wasn't anything like what she remembered of Manchas during their chase. No, wood and citrus and harsh cigarettes—they were, at least, the product of civilization.

Even sped up, the video confirmed it. In the face of real danger, he'd waited for her. He could've escaped on a sky tram, but he'd stayed back. Called for her.

Wood and citrus and tar, the reminder of what he _was_ when threat of death stripped the rest away.

Now the video showed him cowering before Manchas at the edge of the platform, the same fear in his posture as in any hunted prey, and she thought it was so colossally _unfair_. If predators could revert to savages, then maybe even _Nick_ was at risk of, for lack of a better word, transforming. 

Not Nick, she thought. He wasn't that kind of predator. Because that was just not what he was. 

The proof was right here.

Only Manchas remained on the platform now. She turned off the fast-forward.

Nick let out a breath, like he'd been holding it.

"Who are _these_ guys?" she said, feeling the jolt of surprise as wolves crept onto the screen. She hadn't actually expected to come across a real lead—she'd _expected_ Manchas to perform some incredible predator escape move—was this _actually happening?_

"Ugh, timber wolves," said Nick. "Look at these dumb-dumbs," he went on, only for the wolves to launch a containment device at the jaguar. 

Judy's eyes were glued to the screen, but her thoughts were off and racing. The only way the wolves could've possibly known to bring a containment device to _this spot_ was . . .

"Betcha a nickel one of them's gonna howl," Nick said, and later she'd wonder if he was this dismissive of all other predators, or just other members of the family canidae. Me and _them_ , he seemed to be saying.

At that moment, she was too busy trying to reconcile her train of thought with the sight of the wolves actually howling.

In her peripheral vision, Nick moved even closer to the screen. "And there it is," he said, sounding fascinated despite himself. "I mean, what _is_ it with wolves and the howling? It's a—"

"Howlers!" she said, with that electricity of being _right_. "Night Howlers!" 

She turned to Nick, and saw it in him. 

Trust in her instincts, and now her certainty skyrocketed. "That was what Manchas was afraid of!" she said. "The wolves are the Night Howlers! If they took Manchas—"

"I'll bet they took Emmitt too," he said, reflecting her thoughts exactly.

Because they _were_ friends, at least when they were working on the case. They made a great team. She was almost of a mind to think he'd make a pretty good _cop_.

They turned back to the screen with a sense of shared excitement, Judy maneuvering the videos to allow them to follow the car. 

Then, in the tunnel between Tundratown and the Rainforest District, it disappeared.

She felt something in her wilt, because she'd already been dreaming of Nick in a cop uniform and the two of them solving cases like the unstoppable team they were, and of course it had been too good to be true, but somehow she hadn't known that. Somehow, she'd really thought it could be made into reality.

"You know," said Nick, shooing her paws away from the trackpad, waiting until there was no chance they might accidentally touch before taking control himself, "I'm not going to tell you how I know this, because you're you and I'm me—"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"—but if _I_ were looking to take a shortcut out of town, I would use the maintenance tunnel 6-B."

Judy was so ecstatic to see the car again, it took her several moments to recall what he'd been implying.

"What exactly do you do for a living again?" she asked, trying to convey with her tone that she didn't expect a real answer, but also—that she ached for him.

Not that it was a feeling he was likely to appreciate, as she could now appreciate. The fact that his was a life of image and vanity and mammals running their paws over— _actually_ , no. _Scratch_ that image.

_Whatever_ Nick did, Judy was actually going to listen to him and keep her nose out of it, because it wasn't like he was hurting anyone. But himself. And maybe some rich mammals. But mostly himself.

Right?

He didn't want her help, she reminded herself. She was here to do her job, and he was here because they made a great team, and what she wanted beyond that was irrelevant, because she wasn't going to jeopardize the great work they were accomplishing in the here and now.

He'd never want to become a cop, she thought.

"Nothing you'd find interesting," he said.

Was that a _challenge_?

"Try me," she said like she'd never reached a conflicting resolution only seconds before, because she was Judy Hopps, and Judy Hopps _never_ backed down from a challenge.

There was a wry twist to his mouth that she wanted to believe wasn't wholly an act. "You heard Bellwether," he said. "I'm a glorified secretary."

What? Judy's first instinct was to scoff, but his last outburst had also left her wary. She suspected he wouldn't appreciate a show of disbelief.

Nick had a way of lying while telling the truth, she thought. Maybe he _was_ a kind of secretary, but there was also no way his life was as dull as he was suggesting. He wouldn't be here otherwise. 

Judy couldn't figure out how to coax the truth out of him, so she answered with indisputable fact. "Yeah, she was talking about _herself_."

"Why do you think I like her?"

He was trying to get a rise out of her, she thought. His expression had locked back into the smirk she _really_ was starting to hate. 

She decided to change strategy, to paint him the same big eyes she'd tried on Bellwether. Much to her surprise, his mouth softened. 

Well, a tad. "Anyway, she might as well have been talking about me," he said.

Judy tried to read him, but she couldn't tell if he felt anything about what he was saying. She had no idea how to react. Should she ask him if he wanted to change jobs? But then he might be insulted and call her nosy again.

He gestured lazily at the screen, relieving her of the pressure to respond. "Man, watching these guys makes me feel stupider by the second," he said. "Hello geniuses, that is _not_ how you park a car—"

"Pause the video!"

In her excitement, she'd nearly thrown herself into the screen.

Quivering with an energy that ran from her toes to her ears, Judy noted as many details as she could of the car's final location. Gated complex, unidentified on Zoogle Maps, located on an ominous cliffside riverbank—everything about it smelled fishy. 

She was planning out their own route when it hit her.

"How are we gonna get there?" Her cruiser was a tricycle, barely reached thirty miles an hour, and was still parked in Tundratown! "You don't happen to have a car, do you?"

"No," said Nick with the bite she'd come to associate with forbidden territory. 

His smirk recovered like a rebounding spring. " _However_ , I do know how to get one. You don't mind driving?"

That was Nick-speak for _I can't drive_ , Judy was certain. He'd said as much before, sometime early in their acquaintance, but she hadn't believed him.

She still wasn't sure she believed him, because how could someone his age not know how to drive? 

There was no point in asking. She donned one of her aggressive smiles. "I was gonna say, I'd better be the one driving."

Nick clasped a paw to his chest, feigning insult. "Are you saying that I can't be a good driver, Hopps?"

"Wilde, I'm definitely the better driver, and you know it." 

"Do I?"

His smirk was almost a smile. She found her gaze lingering on his muzzle, because she was pleased to see him lightening up, and—was he eyeing her _mouth_?

He was.

She sprang down from the computer chair, feeling her heart pick up speed. They _really_ needed to get a move on. She had no further time to waste on his conflicting signals, his deeply perturbing life choices, his manner of making her constantly question their status as friends.

For now, she told herself, all that mattered was the case. They were friends on the case. They were a super team on the case. 

For now. And maybe one day—

Focus, Judy.

She crossed her arms over her chest, pretending to glare at that smirk. "Get us a car and I'll prove it," she said.

"Challenge accepted," he said with a show of fang, and if there was heat building in her ears, it wasn't because of him. 

Because she was hopping towards the door, and not looking back.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your incredible feedback on the last chapter, it was the greatest motivation and joy and inspiration for me.
> 
> This chapter is so strange. It includes the very first text I wrote for Zootopia (a one-shot set in the canon universe, entirely Nick's POV, fortunately never completed) and one very new, very experimental section; it's also gone through several drafts that went in entirely different directions. I've been incredibly worried about it, especially from a consistency standpoint. If something feels off, don't hesitate to let me know.

Nick fell asleep five minutes into the drive.

It was strange to see him quiet. She was so used to sparring with him in some way or another, she'd almost expected him to sleep-fight with her. 

Not that he was motionless. He twisted in the seat like he was trying to touch his feet with his nose. His tail jerked against the seatbelt pinning it to his side, like it wanted to come up and blanket him. The rear-view mirror showed her that his eyes were shuddering beneath the lids, and his lips seemed to be forming words without voice.

She turned off the ridiculous music he'd chosen—loud, obnoxious, _obviously_ picked out to forestall conversation—and let him sleep.

*

"So are _all_ bunnies this bad at parking, or is it just you?"

Nick had woken about two minutes ago. She'd expected a certain degree of crankiness from him—he would have a crick in his neck from sleeping at that angle, she thought—and so was able to treat the comment as a joke.

"Parking is for wimps," said Judy, turning off the ignition and—mercifully—Nick's horrible new radio picks. 

"Says the police officer."

"Right now, it's the _last_ of our concerns. And now, shhh. We're going to get out, _quietly_ , and take a look around. _Quietly_."

"I got it the third time," he said. At least he was whispering.

Judy's understanding of Nick had improved to the point where she'd correctly predicted his first reaction upon waking. Embarrassed to be seen asleep, he'd turned on the radio and jacked up the volume. 

(He hadn't looked sweet, or young, or vulnerable. She wouldn't have said that. He _had_ made her a little worried, because it seemed odd to sleep so restlessly, even in a car, but she wouldn't have said that either.) 

What she hadn't predicted was his desire to inflict premature damage to her ears. Ten paces out of the car, and they were still ringing.

"Next time, I pick the music," she muttered.

Nick made a show of holding a finger to his muzzle. She punched him lightly on the arm.

" _Ow_ ," he said.

"Shh," she hissed, but it was hard not to smirk at that faux-wounded expression.

They climbed a slippery embankment to get a better look at their surroundings, Nick swearing under his breath every time his paws touched mud, Judy biting her lip to keep herself from telling him to get over it already. One glance over the top of the slope, however, and both of them had lost interest in so much as breathing.

Only a few yards ahead stood a guardhouse. Pacing in front of it, a weapon slung between his paws, was one of the wolves.

Judy looked at Nick, and Nick looked at Judy.

They nodded at the same time.

*

Carrots tried talking to it, but Nick knew straightaway. Emmitt's eyes had whites.

This creature was all black.

Until that moment, he hadn't realized how much he'd wanted the jaguar to be an anomaly. An actual lunatic. An actor.

Well, Nick wasn't one for denial. He didn't know how she'd done it, if she'd even done it, but the political repercussions were hard to miss.

The less he knew, the better. He was only here because it wasn't safe to be alone, because he was safer with Carrots.

Because, why not as well admit it, being here was making him look a whole lot cleverer than he was. Dawn had been smitten with his apparent initiative. Sly fox, he'd seen in her eyes, using the _cop_ to get the job done.

Hooves stroking his tail, heavy and pointed, and she couldn't have made it clearer: whatever Carrots was after, that was the plan. All that talk about sex scandals and leaked emails and whistleblowers? Never more than talk, apparently. And Chuck must've been in on it the entire time, or he wouldn't have encouraged Nick to keep tagging along.

Really, Nick should've guessed. He should've _known_ she'd choose revenge. 

He could almost sympathize, he thought, watching Carrots record Lionheart, watching Lionheart talk himself out of office. Like a bystander standing on a cliff, safe from the raging waves, safe from the wrath of the ocean as it consumed a wrecked ship, he felt both sick and detached.

*

De-  
ath by water  
isn't how she'd imagined—

[drowning]

going but maybe the universe  
is trying to tell her something because—

[the worst death]

first icing—then the rainforest—now a _waterfall_ —yet  
she refuses to believe this is it, that grandma'd been right, that there was—

[in her worst nightmares, the flood that killed the Thumpers]

nothing you could do when it was water, because how bad can it really be the most  
painful thing that could happen was that the impact skinned you or crushed your bones—

[all three hundred of 'em, according to grandma, floating with their heads down]

 _knocked_ you unconscious, yes that would be bad, not being conscious, not being able to _try_  
but she isn't thinking about that, she's thinking about making her body dynamic as a slippery fish. feet like points—

[helpless, according to grandma. and that's why mom made them all pass a swimming test]

she throws the window punch on her utility belt into the collision area, thinking it'll soften the surface, and from the corner of her eye she sees

 

the red plunge of _his fall_ —

*

Their joy-ride through a sewage pipe, Nick realizes, is literally the metaphor for his existence.

Carrots makes him fall. She stuffs him down a toilet, sweeps him screaming and half-sick into the sewer, paw squeezing his until they're inevitably forced apart. Before he can process it, she's got him skyrocketing over a cliff, his waste of a life flashing before him to the unholy soundtrack of water roaring for his bones.

 _Nick_ , the water says.

He doesn't remember hitting the surface, only shaking his head to realize she was _gone_. He's suffocating in the dark and this time, she's not going to save him. 

Suddenly ( _can you swim?_ ) it's on him.

He's nearly at the surface, terror a retreating shadow at his back, when the image forms: crushed rabbit, sinking with the surety of dead weight— 

The water breaks against his paws, almost soft.

"Carrots!" he hears himself say. "Hopps!"

She _doesn't answer_. He thinks—there's a burst, like light behind his eyes. Panic turns into something sour, then sharp: a stab to the gut. 

And his heart.

He can't keep her at bay if she's dead.

"Judy!"

*  
—impact hurts like that really bad word 

somersault  
echo—roaring in her ears—echo  
hissing like hive insects, who knew water had a sound

darkness so consuming, no that's pressure keeping her lids shut  
she just has to _open_ them, but looking into water that was how  
jonny found lisa and she doesn't want to watch 

[water's a force beyond us, according to grandma, it takes and it gives] 

nick said he could swim but what if he's actually really bad  
foxes rarely learn how to swim she read that in an article on  
PREY ONLY signs on swimming pools until the seventies

[look at me, jonny-boy, i'm gonna backflip]

what if he's unconscious  
what if the water has shaved off his face  
what if his bones are bleeding  
she kicks,  
kicks,

kicks and forces her eyes to face the sting and the

pain

[lisa hit a rock, lisa saw the consuming dark]

and hears  
something actually impossible,  
actually inconceivable, like

lisa calling her name towards the

light.

*

The surface breaks.

It shouldn't surprise him—of course it would take more than _physics_ to end the energizer bunny—but seeing her rise out of the water is like his fur momentarily disconnecting from his skin. 

Too much to take in at once. She kicks at the water like she's insulted it's there, brandishing her bagged phone like a talisman against reason and yelling about the case, and Nick doesn't even have a word for this species of crazy. He's strangely warm and his mouth is dry and there's that dull, stabbing pain in his gut and he thinks, over and over again: 

_Judy_.

He can't. He can't. He can't he can't he can't he _can't_ —

*

"Penny for your thoughts," said Judy.

They were on the riverbank, waiting for the helicopters and TUSK team and Chief Bogo to arrive so they could stage the next part of their plan. After an initial phase of spitting and shivering, Nick had found the aviators in his shirt pocket—miraculously still intact—and slipped them on. If he was aware that the sky was a mean shade of grey, figuratively clogged with storm clouds, he gave no indication of caring. 

He'd spoken a total time of once since they'd emerged from the river, and that was while Judy had been on the phone with Clawhauser, and only to ask for something warm to drink, please, from Snarlbucks, if possible, yes, a latte was fine.

Since then, he'd withdrawn into neurotic behavior, alternating between clicking the wheel of his soaked lighter and trying to dry cigarettes on a fallen log using one of two futile methods: blowing on them, and fanning them with his paws and tail. Judy didn't have the heart to tell him to leave it alone.

Truth be told, she'd been preoccupied with her thoughts as well.

She felt like she'd seen a ghost. Like Lisa had saved her to finish this.

Who else could it have been? Of her dead, only Lisa had drowned. Nick was out of the question. The idea of him calling for anyone other than _Carrots_ or _Fluff_ was ludicrous.

Her dead sister had saved her so she could close her first case. That made sense in her mind. But the closing act was taking longer to get started than she'd like. 

Her clothes were still leaking tears.

She took a seat on other side of the log, making sure not to disrupt the cigarettes. She looked long at Nick, expecting to hear a click or the whirr of his fanning, but he sat still, hunched over with his paws dangling between his knees, staring at the muddy reliefs of their footprints.

Depressed over his ruined cigarettes, she thought. He went through half a pack in a day, and she suspected it was more than just an addiction. When he smoked, he seemed to need to be alone with the cigarette, like it was a sacred ritual and the presence of an uninitiated layperson constituted sacrilege. 

She didn't think it was just _her_ , although she'd noticed a pattern. Every time she'd intruded on his smoking time, it had rattled him. 

"I'm sorry about your cigarettes," she said, and regretted not thinking to ask for a fresh pack in addition to the latte. 

She didn't even know what brand he liked. Twisting a little to the side, she saw a flattened, washed-out carton lying alongside the bumpy rolls of white and tan. _Nesterfields_. Didn't Jack Savage smoke those in the movies?

"I'll get you new ones," she said.

"Don't bother."

"Why not? They're ruined because of me."

"You've done enough," he said, dark, and she told herself it was because they'd almost died _again_ , thanks to her negligence once _again_ , and that he had every reason to be angry.

She was disappointed with herself—it had been _really_ stupid not to silence her phone, and their toilet-escape had been super risky—but the disappointment was outweighed by the memory of light.

And her sense of relief. She'd spoken briefly with Chief Bogo. While he hadn't said anything _concrete_ about her badge, the tone of his voice had told her she'd earned it.

They'd won the deal. She and Nick, they'd _won_.

She wished he could be a little happier about it, then felt guilty for the thought. It had been a very long day for him, she told herself.

"You'll be home soon," she said, trying to sound soothing. "It's almost over."

His paw reached into the pocket over his heart, fishing for his lighter. Every time he took it out and confirmed it was broken, he still put it back, like he thought warming it against his chest was the way to fix it. 

She watched the lighter emerge, his flick of wrist. He joggled it in his paw, and she wondered if smoking had made his fur darker. 

"Over," he said.

"Sure, we've found the missing mammals." 

Of course, she thought, things were far from over for _her_. Lionheart still had to be arrested and questioned, that doctor still had to be arrested and questioned, in fact there were tons of arrests still to be made, and that wasn't even considering the bureaucratic nightmare of making so many arrests. 

But these were police matters now. Nick didn't have to be involved.

One of his feet was digging into the mud, like he'd learned not to mind it. "And then you're as good as gone, aren't you."

There was resentment in his voice, and she didn't understand.

 _Click_ went the wheel of his lighter.

"No, Nick, we're still friends," she said, because she had to say something. He scowled at the ground, and she swallowed. "Unless you no longer want to be?"

"Did I say that?"

 _Click_ went the wheel of his lighter.

She could feel annoyance building. 

"You haven't said much," she pointed out.

She watched his ears sink over his head. Maybe he enjoyed helping on the case and didn't want it to end and resented her for making him feel that way, she thought. Or maybe the resentment came from some misconception that she'd used him for his skills and now was about to toss him aside. 

He _did_ have many skills, she had to admit. It was a real shame he wasn't police officer material. You couldn't have his lifestyle and temperament and work on the force.

"What do you think is happening, anyway?" she asked. 

Paw over heart, he pocketed the lighter. "Sorry, I don't speak for all preds."

"I'm not asking you to speak—" Too late, Judy recognized the trap. 

She closed her eyes and tried for a calm, pleasant voice. "Nick. You know Lionheart _personally_." She heard the log creak and opened her eyes to see that his paws had balled into fists on his knees. "Why would he cover this up?"

"I don't know. Why is the assistant mayor's office in the _boiler room_?"

Judy did not want to think about that boiler room, but the point was valid. She thought around the boiler room, to the doors slammed against binders. A sweet smile, a bell necklace and—

"So he really only cares about himself," she said. 

"He's a big predator, Carrots. What do you think?"

She felt her brows furrow. Something about how Nick said _predator_ struck her as off. Like how everyone said _Nicky_. 

"What do you mean?"

"Do you have to answer every question with a question?"

"Speak for yourself," she said, stung.

He looked cross, almost like he wanted to snarl, but she put that down to the source of his resentment. 

Talking _had_ to be better for him than sulking, she thought. Even if it meant she had to deal with his moods. 

She tried for a smile, her cajoling best, the smile that got crying siblings to lean in for snuggles in her arms. "Come on, Nick. You know _everyone_. You must have a theory."

He leapt to his feet. 

"Do I have to spell it out?" he asked, and she heard a little catch in his voice. 

Without waiting for an answer, he started to pace, paws combing back his ears in what could only be a nervous tic. She knew he would never willingly make himself look disheveled. "Was one visit to the looney zoo not enough? Was the doctor not _frank_ enough for you?"

"Nick—"

He spoke right over her. "It's just like you to ignore what's staring you in the face," he said with a bitter chuckle. "Oh, my poor fox bully, so misunderstood and persecuted! He couldn't help it, it was all my _fault_!" 

He'd clasped his paws together like the satire of a lovestruck girl. Now he straightened, canines sliding past his lips. "What will it take you to realize that predators aren't _like_ prey? That all your talk about _friendship_ and _boundaries_ is nothing but that— _talk_?"

"It is _not_ just talk," she said.

His eyes narrowed down to the green. "Let me explain this to you in words not even _you_ can misunderstand."

And his entire posture shifted, taking on that distinct energy Judy recognized from theater practice, when someone stepped into a role. "Every progressive prey-animal I know starts out thinking, hey, let's put an end to difference, let's fight for some real equality between predators and prey!"

His paws, springing until that moment like marionettes, stilled. "Only to realize: there _is_ a difference, and it's one that can kill you."

Muzzle falling forward like the stick of a car shifting into high gear, he assumed a new, furious pace.

"Thing is, nobody's afraid of of prey." His ears went askew, and he shook his head like that would straighten them. "And when it turns out preds actually _can_ go savage? that there's a _killer instinct_ rooted somewhere down deep in their DNA, and doctors can't even identify the trigger switch?" 

Nick snapped off his aviators, revealing eyes cold as jade.

"In a city that's ninety-percent prey," he said, "that's when you know it's time to give up the hopeless dreams and pretty words and accept _reality_."

Reality, he said, like she was the worst student in a class. She imagined he saw himself in the role of a remedial teacher. 

The trouble was, the more he spoke, the more she felt like he was really a prosecutor accusing them both of misdeeds. The things he was saying—Judy could've said them. She'd thought, worse, she _believed_ similar things. 

But he didn't seem to know that. He seemed to think she was a better mammal than she was, with lofty ideas only fear could cure. Fear me, he seemed to say. 

With the showmanship of a crocodile, he opened wide, revealing tooth after tooth. Look at how easily I could kill you, he seemed to say.

Look at us, she thought.

"Because this is who we really are," he said. As his mouth moved, she saw a tremor in his muzzle. "Because some lines, they _can't_ be crossed." The tremor became a curl. "Because any predator— _every_ predator—could be next in line to try—" 

Dramatic flourish of claws, only to be expected. "—and _eat_ you!" 

Nick had raised his arms over his head, giving him the stature of someone twice his size; now he dropped them. 

Ferocity was replaced by devil-may-care. But his tail lurched, a sure sign he was sinking. "There's no knowing when it'll happen. There's no knowing why. Preds are _degenerate_ , Carrots, and you're only putting yourself in danger by thinking otherwise."

She didn't feel endangered, she thought. She'd seen his show of teeth and claws one too many times—it was getting predictable, and old, and more and more perturbing. More than perturbing, actually. She felt green, like there was something rotting inside of her.

Judy didn't know exactly what was rotting, but she did know he was wrong to think himself the sickness. "You think you're degenerate?"

Something happened to his eyes, making the pupils thin. Pinpoints rather than vertical slits, and she realized he didn't have the fox-eyes of the storybooks. "I _know_ I am."

He might as well have hit her on the head with a stun bar, that was how cogent her thoughts were right now.

"You-you can't _know_ that—"

"Carrots, I put you in _flight_!"

So he had, she thought. She felt like she was in a whirling funnel and he was stuck on the other side and that nothing exactly made sense because they were yelling at each other across too great a distance while accelerating. 

Except, she thought, looking at his eyes, so familiar now they were almost the color of friendship.

She'd seen him run and heard him scream. She'd breathed in his fear-scent. She'd seen him spring away from her, terrified by his own fear that _she_ was afraid of him. She'd seen him at his absolute worst, she thought.

The savage tiger, the jaguar, the bear—Nick wasn't _like_ them. 

She believed that with all her heart, she realized. "No," she said. "You're not that kind of predator." 

His eyes rolled, flashing almost all white. "I enjoyed it!" he said, stepping close. He raised paws trembling so badly, she realized they _were_ sometimes a tell. "I _liked_ making you scared!"

Judy could imagine the prosecutor standing behind him, accusing him of guilt. Nick was so filled with self-loathing; there was so much guilt in him, she thought.

Why?

"We all have our moments," she said. "Nick, there are plenty of _prey_ animals who enjoy scaring others. And I get it—I get under your skin. You like keeping things close, and too often I don't respect that. I push and I ask too many questions and of course you snap. That has nothing to do with a _killer instinct_."

She could tell she was losing him, and scrambled to her feet to try and convey urgency, sincerity, the knowledge in her heart. "It has _everything_ to do with rightfully wanting your boundaries respected, with common values like decency!"

"I honestly don't know what else I can do," he said, throwing up his paws like she was hopeless. "She might as well glue a sign to her back! EAT ME, NUTJOBS—"

"Nick!"

"Listen to what I'm telling you, Carrots! I'm just like _them_. Believe me, I wanted to think there was a difference—"

"There is a difference!"

His legs, she'd realized, reminded her of high-school meets. He looked like a sprinter tensed for the starting pistol.

He was always trying to run. She'd made him promise once, run at the first sight of danger. Ironic, wasn't it, that he mostly seemed eager to run from _her_.

"Facts, Carrots!" he said. "Face it, there are preds and there are _preds_ , and Emmitt was pretty much the model on how to be good. Next to someone like that, a fox doesn't stand a chance!"

The sight of Otterton on all fours, screeching at them in a feral tongue, had surprised her, but they'd known to expect something shocking. She honestly hadn't expected Nick to be affected this badly.

She had to slow him down, she thought. This train of thought was a current that cartwheeled him to dark places, and it was threatening to drown him. She had to believe that there was a light for him as there'd been for her.

"Well," she said, and heard a waver in her own tone, "maybe there's some other explanation!"

She'd only said this to stall, except now something struck her.

 _Could_ there be another explanation? 

That got another jolt. _Shouldn't_ she consider the case from other angles? 

The prosecutor wagged a finger, and finally she understood why. All this time, she'd been failing one of the basic lessons of her police training: never put all your eggs in the basket of one pet theory!

Because otherwise, _you'll be dead, harebrain!_

She threw out her arms like she'd been taught in traffic class, stop vehicles right left. His brows climbed on his forehead, probably she seemed a little too aggressive.

"Nick, listen up," she said, channeling her best bossy tone. "We're going to rethink the case."

His brows fell, like this was too good to be true. "Are you saying . . . you actually _agree_ with me?"

She circled her spot on the ground, bringing her paws to her forehead and closing her eyes as if a compelling explanation other than _killer instinct_ had presented itself.

"Earth to Carrots, answer the question."

"No," she said. 

" _What_?"

Typical. Here she was trying to prove something, and his first instinct was to make her confused.

"I'm _thinking_ ," she said, and knocked her paws against her skull like that would jump-start inspiration.

"Why are you thinking? There's nothing to think _about_. The only way this could get any simpler is in colorful block letters. PREDS GO SAVAGE. End of story!"

Nick's reaction, she thought, was predictive. If he could feel this panicked about a _theory_ , there was no telling what a mass of predators might feel or do. And that wasn't even considering the prey perspective. 

There might be riots.

The skin above her nose began pressing into folds as her mind scoured over the evidence, scrambling to find something, anything else.

 _Click_ , and her thoughts were interrupted. "You know, that back-up is gonna arrive any minute now," he said, re-pocketing his lighter. "Maybe we should move closer to the road."

A huff through her nose. 

Why did he have to be so _difficult_? He could be so charming. Sometimes, just looking at him made her feel full inside.

That was usually before he opened his mouth. Things were better now, they'd come a long way, but boy had he been a jerk when they'd first met. If things had gone his way back then, some other cop would've been the one looking for Otterton. Some other cop would be standing here right now, taking credit for discovering him.

Speaking of Otterton . . .

She opened her eyes, catching his hard stare. "Don't you think it's strange that both Otterton _and_ Manchas . . ." 

What was a different way to say _savage_?

"What," he said, "that they both ended up going nuts? Sure, it's weird. What are you saying? Are you seriously thinking this could be like an _infection_?"

He looked so nervous, she suspected he'd been thinking about this possibility for a while. "You mean like a virus?" 

"Oh God, it all adds up," said Nick, ears flopping back like he'd just recounted his worst nightmare. "Otterton attacks Manchas. Two weeks later, Manchas goes off his rocker—"

"—right in front of us, you'll remember," Judy interrupted, because Nick was counting off on his paws with such intensity she thought he might snap off a finger. "Do viruses normally kick in like that?"

"Maybe?" His paws flew like confused insects. "I don't know, Carrots, it's not like any of this is _normal_!"

Judy had long suspected that Nick was familiar with the patient side of a hospital. Maybe he was onto something. Maybe there _was_ a virus that affected predators by triggering ancient instincts. 

Only . . . "How would it have spread in the first place?" She'd remembered the map in the precinct, the photographs spread seemingly at random over Zootopia. "None of the other cases are connected."

"Have you seen the other case files? Do you actually know that?"

That gave her pause. Jumping to conclusions again, Hopps, she thought. What was she going to _do_ without Nick to force her into thinking?

"But if it really _was_ an infection, why wasn't that badger affected?" she said. "Or any of the wolves, come to think of it? They've interacted with the . . . victims, so shouldn't they also be at risk of catching it too?"

As she spoke, Judy thought back to Manchas, his gentle manner sliding away like a paper mask, replaced by uncoiling viciousness.

Manchas had swiped Nick's tail, she remembered. The cut had been little more than a scratch, as far as she knew—he'd spent the end of their ride on the sky tram inspecting it, and she hadn't seen or smelled blood—but in this context a scratch might be enough. 

". . . maybe they're infected and just don't know it yet," Nick was saying.

Could Nick be right, could he actually be at risk?

As she considered the possibility, she couldn't help but be annoyed at the bad timing. How great were the chances Manchas would transform _right_ before he was supposed to tell them everything? Really, how likely had that been to happen?

Her buckteeth ground against one another, and she ignored the silent mantra of her dentist, telling her to fight her instincts for healthier teeth.

Not that Manchas was a first, she thought, grinding now with so much pressure, she could feel a dull throb spreading throughout her jaw. Otterton had been on his way to talk to Mr. Big, to tell Mr. Big about something _important_ when . . .

"Biology is a real bitch, Carrots!" she heard Nick say.

" _Or_ , she said, and that electric feeling was back, the one she got when she knew she was right, the one that made her leap straight to her toes with her ears bolt upright and tingling, " _biology_ isn't even half of it, because _someone_ is targeting predators with a virus to keep them from _talking_!"

Nick's shoulders shuddered. His paws fell to his sides, so limp they would've dropped anything in them.

"Think about it!" she said, and she could hear the excitement rising in her own voice. "Otterton knew something! So did Manchas! Right when they were about to tell someone _what_ they knew, they were silenced!"

"N-no," he said.

She shook her head, knowing she would convince him. "Nick, you're right. I _haven't_ seen the other case files," she said. "What if there _is_ some connection that's been overlooked? I mean, something beyond the fact that the victims are all predators? Maybe—maybe this doesn't even have anything to do with _being_ a predator at all!"

In the silence following her words, she saw Nick's chest inflating and deflating rapidly, like he was having a panic attack.

"No, no, it does," he said, more to himself than to her.

Judy opened her mouth to protest, but he silenced her with the paw that went to his chest, squeezing at his heart like it was about to stop.

"Carrots, if you're right, then I'm next." She took a step towards him, meaning to offer some comfort, but he stepped back, one paw going out to keep her at a distance. " _I'm_ next."

His eyes shone with fear.

No longer sure whether to move or stay still, she chose an option in-between, a tiny step his way.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "Why would anyone target—"

Judy's next words were cut off by the blast of approaching blades.

Paws shooting into her ears to cut some of the noise, her perception narrowed down to copters and sirens. With all the red and blue light washing over them, it took effort to notice Nick's expression. 

He'd frozen in shock. The air was foul with his fear-scent. 

He looked exhausted, and small, and desperate for comfort, and she'd never felt more protective of him than in this moment. She sprang to his side and took up his wrist, thin enough she could almost fully encircle it with her paw.

"Judy, you have to help me," he mouthed, so slow and deliberate it was hard to think he was saying something else, except he wasn't a rabbit and fox lips moved very differently and she was obviously just misreading him.

He couldn't have said her name, because it was one of the strange facts of their friendship that he actually didn't know it.

The din made it pointless to attempt a verbal response. She shook her head, hauling on his wrist until he stopped yelling and began following her. The embankment between them and the reinforcements was steeper than she'd expected; she climbed up while holding his paw, worried he was so tired, he'd lose balance.

Finally, they had the squadron of cars in their sight.

Right before they were about to pass the cars, however, he stopped so powerfully their joined paws acted like a rope, stopping her with him. Before she could react, he'd grabbed her by the shoulders.

The red of his eyeshine was a darker shade than the sirens, she thought. "Listen, you can't repeat any of this," he said. "That would be suicide, do you understand?"

Of course she had to speak up about her suspicions. Chief Bogo might not _like_ her theory, he'd probably dismiss it as pure speculation, in fact. But once he gave her access to the other case files, it wouldn't matter what he _thought_. She would prove to him, once again, that she could get to the bottom of anything. 

Nick seemed so frightened, she felt she had to whitewash a little. "Don't worry," she said. "I won't do anything stupid. Now come on. Your latte keeps getting colder."

She tugged him past the cars.

He slipped out of her grasp, making a show of putting on his aviators despite it being night. Trunkaby handed him his latte, claiming it was still warm, and Judy gave him a big reassuring smile, hoping she could convey her good feeling to him about where things were heading. 

He brought out the very best in her, she thought. She couldn't imagine life without him. Her paw was still tingling from where she'd held his.

Soon enough, she thought, all would be well.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be the press conference chapter, but Nick dragged his feet so much that I ended up having to chop the chapter into two. 
> 
> Thank you so much for your patience with this one. I've been on painkillers and really struggling to think, hence my slow pace at editing and responding to comments. I have to retreat back into dissertation writing as well, so updates will unfortunately slow down, especially over the next two weeks (chapter deadline approaching). Never fear: the story will be completed. Thank you for your incredible comments and support, you have made a more thoughtful writer. If any of this chapter works, it's because of you. As for what doesn't work—and I expect this chapter will have a lot of it—please let me know, we'll make it better.

His mind was a grey fog until light pierced it. The pull of the light was so strong, his eyes opened, and he saw from the night that the day had yet to end.

He'd gone to the car because she'd needed space, because Bozo and the rest of the Buffalo Gang had wanted to talk to her alone. And he'd—clearly—fallen asleep. And the overhead lights were on because—

"Hey, sleepyhead." 

Sweet _Carrots_ he hadn't expected that. 

He had a paw up to his eyes and his tail was full with surprise, and he wondered at his own flare of modesty: it wasn't like he was naked. Now he let his paw drop and his smile rise, and when he looked out he saw her own smile, caught funnily between moon- and lamplight. 

She stood between the open door and the car, gazing in from that threshold almost like she expected him to join her there. 

Oh. The keys. 

Where—there, must've fallen from his lap, and he bent down to scrabble for the chain that his tail must've swept onto the car floor. 

They jangled as he held them up, reminding him of how much he hated the tremble in his paw. The only downside to smoking, in his opinion. He wouldn't mind a tremor he could control, because it sometimes paid to look weak. But not with her. 

Right now, he wanted steady paws. 

She slid into the driver's seat. "Thanks," she said, accepting the chain.

Carrots smiled too much. He didn't want to say it, so he raised a paw to his eyes like he needed to wipe sand from the corners. Turned out there was a lot of sand, and it was all coming from his paw. His paw was covered in freaking mud, what had he been thinking, rubbing it against his eyes, and—

What kind of moron was he, he thought, trying to lick the shit off his paw with his _tongue_ , and now his mouth tasted even more like fish and offal and sludge.

"Wow, it's really muggy in here," she said. She'd turned on the ignition and was fiddling with the air-conditioning.

He hoped she hadn't seen him trying to lick his dirty paw. He ran the tongue-soaked back over his head, feeling how the fur there had clumped together as it had dried. 

"Chief Bang a Gong say anything?" he asked.

She glanced up, and her eyes held the answer. "I can keep my badge," she said.

"Hey, that's great news!"

She really smiled too much. He averted his gaze and found the seatbelt. Right, he should buckle up.

"He was really impressed with us," she said. 

There was a lilt to her voice that made his ears prick, because it carried weight. Like her next words would depend on his reaction. She expected him to counter-parry, he thought. But how? You're one impressive bunny, was that what she wanted to hear?

No way. He wasn't saying that. 

The silence that settled around them was like an anchor tethering him to an ocean lull. He was the parched sailor, survivor of a mission gone wrong, and the anchor was too heavy for him to reel back in on his own. 

She buckled herself in, and he kept his eyes trained away from her expression. Her fur was matted, he noted, the fine strands bunched together like little arrows. She looked less grey than silver-black. 

He watched her lean forward to close the door. Right before the cabin lights turned off, her eyes flashed an eerie color. Like unformed clay, he thought, or fox-coat in winter.

Red, he thought, that was what most animals saw. "How good is your night vision?" he heard himself ask.

"Is that your way of saying I can't be a good driver at night?"

She was way too shrewd, he thought. 

Time for some distracting cocktail party talk. See, he told her, when people said it was weird that foxes and rabbits had the same color eyeshine, since the one was supposed to hunt the other and everything, Nick never understood what they were talking about. To his eyes, the colors couldn't be more dissimilar. And—

"Yeah," she interrupted. "I noticed that too. You've got this kind of . . . fire-blue."

OK, first of all, she wasn't supposed to speak, she was supposed to nod sagely at all the smart things _he_ was saying. Second of all, her comparisons were awful. " _Fire_ -blue? Did that make sense in your head?"

"Come on, you know what I mean. Like what you'd see from inside of a flame." 

Carrots was starting to weird him out. "Just to clarify here: you're saying that looking at my eyeshine makes you think about being _burned alive_?"

Her feet had been hovering over the pedals like she was waiting for a signal before she'd start driving. Now she pressed down.

"No!" she said. "Ugh, forget about it, I'm too tired to explain. Can I take you home?"

"I was wondering if you'd ever ask," he said, smug over getting her to change the subject.

Wait a second.

His heart stumbled like all those times he'd grown overconfident on the track and tripped over hurdles. "You're coming with, right?" 

She was backing them out of the lot. Eyes on the rear window, paws gripping the steering wheel, her mouth a concentrated line.

"We'll toast your success," he said. "I've got grower champagne. And there's this great take-away down the street, they make the best pea-and-carrot samosas. You'll love them, it'll be my treat."

"That sounds really nice," she said. "And I'd love to, some other time—"

You can have the bed, he thought about saying. You can use the washer and dryer, the neighbors might file a noise complaint but who cares. You can take a bubble bath. I'll clean your uniform like a pro. Last time I wasn't prepared, I was too tired, but this time you won't regret your stay _chez Nick_. This time, I'll make it so you'll never want to leave.

"—but I need to go home."

Why? he thought.

"Did you not like it?" he asked.

One of her ears flicked back like she was fighting an itch. "Nick," she said. "Of course I liked it. Your apartment is amazing. There are just some things I can only take care of at home."

It was futile, he realized. She had every intention of going home, and nothing he said would change her mind. 

Great. Now he had to find a way to tag along.

The car started down a bumpy road, headlights shimmering in shoulder-side puddles like tiny fires. In his head, he ran through scenarios. 

They were friends, right? So he could tell her, as a friend, in confidence, that he felt unsafe. He'd seen too much, and Big was after him, and friends didn't let friends get hurt, right?

Right. He began rehearsing his lines. Just for the night, or a few, and he'd be quieter than a mouse. He'd make an excellent foot-warmer. He'd do all the laundry and sew up the tears in her uniform. He'd give her a massage. 

Would she want sex? On the one hand, country bunny, maybe she thought sleeping outside of species was wrong, or that doing it with a degenerate could somehow rub off. She'd been furious when he'd pulled her tail. On the other hand, wasn't she a friend now? someone who saw _him_ and what he could offer and how much he wanted to be different? 

Maybe she was just in denial?

Counting his chickens before they'd hatched, and he only needed to cross that road if they ever came to it.

Pity, really. She was strong and had eyes full of soul and he'd seen her legs, and it was so easy to picture the rest of her, silver and black where he was black and red, milk where he was cream. 

Beautiful, and now he wanted milk.

She'd be gutsy; he'd be extra gentle. His tail would be her blanket . . . 

And she'd hug back until he was breathless. And she'd be brave and curious and endearing, and it was impossible but he could _see_ it, Judy and her little bunny mouth, reaching for him like she'd been caught in the same ocean lull as he was, all her water trickled into the sea, and he was her only hope. 

Wouldn't that be something, he thought. Rabbit in his mouth, earthy and soft and now he regretted ever allowing himself the image. Now he was almost glad he stank of his own fear and waste. No better scent-mask than _that_ , as you might imagine.

He shouldn't, but the image was so _sweet_. 

He'd assumed, pretty much until now, that the only way he could interest her was with the muzzle and collar and leash, but what if Carrots was really this _Judy_ , was really this _crazy_? Mad as a March hare, they said, and it was true, the nuttier the idea, the easier it was to imagine her doing it, and what if—what if she wanted him unshackled?—God! he would kiss her with abandon, the way he'd only ever kissed—

Yeah, the same way he'd drawn blood. Not worth the risk.

But that was reality and this was his fantasy and if he felt like indulging a little longer, it wasn't like anyone could stop him. 

Besides, things were just getting good. The more reckless he imagined her, the better the fantasy became. She'd let him try things he'd never gotten to try before. She wouldn't let some small accidental cut faze her. His teeth would be free to take gentle nips, and her eyes would flash at him like the mad otter—

_No_ , he thought.

"Nick?"

Chuck, he thought. He needed Chuck, he needed a cure. 

And the shame was biting at him from inside like a sewing machine stitching tattoos against his skin. "Yeah?" he said.

"You don't look so good."

"Just tired," he said. 

The thickness to his voice was at least consistent with exhaustion. "Actually, could you do me a favor and drop me off at my office?" he asked.

She gave him a long look, her expression telling him he needed to preempt questions. 

"My phone's dead," he said. "I should get a spare."

"Can't that wait until morning?"

"No."

"By the time we get there, it'll be past midnight," she said, and he could hear the disbelief in her voice, like she thought he was being neurotic.

"Look, don't worry, I have a fold-out bed in my office if it comes to that."

"I'd wait for you with the car—"

"No, you go on home," he said. "I've been napping all day; you've barely slept. Plus you have to find parking, that could take a while."

When he phrased it like that, there was nothing she could do, he thought. Disapproval wasn't disagreement. Besides, she had to get up early to return the car before work. Even she had to be aware of how little time she had.

They'd driven into a cloud; raindrops were beating against the windshield, and she turned on the wipers. 

Her expression mirrored the weather. "You need rest," she said. "Napping doesn't equal quality sleep, you know."

"I'll be fine, _mother_ ," he said. "You do realize I've been taking care of myself since before you were born?"

Eyes focused ahead, she said, "You're not that old."

Her voice told him this was an area where she was sensitive. It surprised him, because he didn't quite understand the issue.

Still, he wasn't going to turn down the gift horse looking him in the mouth. 

Something she'd said once made him think she hated being seen as a child. That was a good start. "You could basically be my kid, that's how old I am," he said.

She looked at him. He leered.

"No way!" she said, and he relished the agitation. 

No better way to kill a fantasy, he thought. She'd never look at him now.

"Darling, didn't your parents teach you about denial?"

She blinked those big eyes like he'd shattered a cherished illusion. "But-but you can't be a day over forty!"

Nick didn't realize his chest had shot forward until he felt the reverberations of the seatbelt. "Forty?" he spat. "Carrots, I'm thirty-two!"

She grinned—and shit, had she _played_ him?

"Huh," she said, with a smugness that confirmed, yes, she'd played him _good_ , "well, eight years here, eight years there, eight years are basically nothing, aren't they."

So she was twenty-four, he thought. Two years older than his estimate. 

Well, shit.

He may have lost the gamble, but at least he'd have the last word. "Doesn't make me any younger, sweetheart," he said.

Dammit, his voice gave it all away. It wasn't that she'd turned the tables on him, because _March hare_ , of course she had. 

The implications, though? Not good. If he looked ancient to her eyes . . . he didn't _actually_ want to look ancient in her eyes. He wanted—he wanted her to want him but not act on it, because that would bring out the worst in him, but still . . .

Were his looks fading?

Teensy-weensy little panic attack, nothing to see here. 

Move along.

"Come on, Carrots, be honest," he said, and if there was a tremor in his voice, he pretended not to hear it. "You'd never date someone as old as me, am I right or am I right?"

He wanted her to hit back, smirking and sly, on how she preferred men _far_ older than he was. He expected her to blow him off as a jokester or hold a lecture on how age was a meaningless category. He feared (but also kind of craved) code-speak about how interspecies dating was gross, because boundaries were boundaries and couldn't he try to respect them. The we're-just-friends-speech, in other words.

She said nothing.

Wow, he thought.

The inside of his nose clenched, the surface losing heat, becoming sharp with cold. He crossed his arms over his ribs, pressing in tight like that would prevent the ugliness from spreading past his chest.

As her silence merged with the rubber squeak of the wipers, with the lashing of the rain, his perception widened to drown the signal in noise. Between wipes, the rain filmed over the glass like black paint. The headlights made it hard to see much, but he could make out cracks in the road, leftovers from harsh winters.

His paws were sweating, but the rest of him was shivering from where the air-conditioning waged its battle against humidity. Under the fur that felt less like a part of him than like a medicinal treatment warping the pattern of his skin, goosebumps gathered like warts.

She had her paws full with driving, and what was his excuse?

Wounded vanity, he thought. 

Except. Except what _was_ he without his looks? 

The question sent him to the window, to his own grey reflection in the glass. He looked a little—OK, a lot—worse for the wear, but who _wouldn't_ after being chased into a toilet and swept over a waterfall? 

He didn't want to look at his reflection anymore. He wanted to play that old game, the game he'd played ever since he was small: trying to identify the world's shapes past one distorting curtain or another. In this case the rain.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," she said.

His tail had reared up like a startled bear. He gathered it into his paws to flatten it. It looked rather stringy, what with how the fur had lumped together, and now he was mortified.

So he looked at her. When the tips of her ears twisted backward like they were now, he knew he was in trouble.

Well, wasn't this what he'd wanted? 

"Pretend to like everyone," she said a little more loudly. "I know it's a lie."

She made it sound like _he_ was the child. Like she really was his mother, scolding him for being such a damn butterfly, flitting from one instance of praise to the next.

"It was a stupid joke," he said, trying to make his ears rise against their instinct to act like suspects, throwing themselves on the ground in hopes the cops wouldn't shoot. He _wasn't_ a child. _She_ was the child here.

"No, I don't think it was a joke." 

"It absolutely was a joke," he said. 

The only way out of this was to turn the tables on her, he thought. "And I don't pretend to like _everyone_. Did I pretend to like you when we first met? No, no, I did not."

She snorted.

"That's different," she said. "I wasn't important enough, for starters, and I was calling you a liar to your face."

Great, he could milk this. 

He put on a little gasp, letting his paw fly to his chest. "Does this mean I get an apology?" he asked. "Hopps, it's like you've changed."

At least her ears were starting to relax. "Your friend Connors was the liar, but all I could see in that car was you," she said. "And that was unfair, and I understand that it bothered you. I'm sorry too, for what it's worth. The way I approached you was wrong."

Was it, though? he thought.

He didn't want to look at her anymore.

The car had been lowering into a valley, and it now hit the end of the incline and a puddle gathered into the curve. The front carriage knocked forward, sending water all over the windshield.

Carrots grimaced, and he was glad he'd never learned how to drive. 

"But I've seen plenty of other animals treat you badly, and you just grin and bear it," she said over the sound of windshield wipers upped to high. "No, the reason you were mean to me back then was because you could be."

What?

Nick needed to chew over this. He'd never spared much thought for those early moments of their acquaintance. 

He shouldn't.

But there was something about her, something that made it worth bearing the strain of having to collect the memories.

Like the fact that he could laugh at her. She'd been even more naive than she was now, yes, he remembered that, how she'd treated him like the big, bad fox. Annoying even at the best of times. And she'd interrupted his smoke. Right, he remembered wanting her gone. And maybe . . . 

"I was mean to you?" he asked, just to confirm.

Maybe—OK, he could admit it—he also remembered wanting to take her down a notch. It was a lesson he'd figured she'd have to learn eventually, and who better to teach it to her than him? The irony of it all had been pretty hilarious.

It didn't seem as funny now.

"I'm glad you were," she said. "I feel like every time we fight, something good comes of it." 

She glanced over and saw his raised eyebrows. "But sure, you were a huge jerk."

"We _are_ always fighting, aren't we."

He'd thought it so often, there was a certain satisfaction to getting the words out. She laughed, and he figured she'd been thinking it too.

Carrots had a nice laugh. Grinning a little, he nudged her with an elbow. "You think it's cause we're natural enemies?"

Good one, he thought. They could both use the reminder.

He looked at her face and saw it had gone slack. So she was thinking. He knew he should tell her to think less, it was how she'd survive, except that he was now also curious to know what she was thinking.

Curiosity would ever kill the fox, they said. But since she was a rabbit, he thought the fox could take the risk.

"I've never had a friend like you before," she said. 

"Because I'm your natural enemy?"

"No, silly," she said, and her ears curved over her head like they were trying to poke him on purpose. "Because you're never boring. You make me think all the time."

There was an alarming statement if he'd ever heard one. "Didn't we just establish that I make you mad all the time?"

"Same thing," she said, and there was a lightness to her voice that he didn't understand. 

"Only you would say that."

"It only makes sense because it's you," she said. "I feel like there's been this Nick-shaped spot in my life, and I was just waiting for you all these years to come along and fill it."

This _had_ to top the list of the cheesiest things ever said to him. It was so over-the-top ridiculous, it could be a cue for sarcastic laughter.

"You're something else, Carrots," he said.

His arms were still crossed over his chest. He tugged the rope of them against his ribs.

So she was a little cornier than his city friends. He'd made a major _faux pas_. Maybe it all cancelled out, because something in him had eased. He could look at her—the light in her fur, the moon of her smiling cheek—and feel almost guiltless, and she drove in a silence that struck him like a clear night.

He found himself drifting in that night, words giving way to images. Carrots in real clothes, wouldn't that be a sight, the two of them solving cases together like hard-nosed detectives in the movies. Carrots in a cat-suit, both of them ricocheting off ceilings and managing improbable stunts to fell even more improbable enemies. 

Defenders of the free world.

Judy and me.

Pulling into the streets of Financial, all the skyscrapers lit like birthday cakes with empty office tiers, the restaurants as lifeless as abandoned sets in a studio, came as a shock. He'd forgotten this was the real world.

"There'll be a press conference tomorrow," she said. "Chief Bogo wants me to answer questions from the media."

He sat bolt upright in his seat.

"What?" he said. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

Dread was rising in him like a fist being rammed up his gut.

"Uh, because it's at nine am and you could use the rest?" She glanced at him. Later, it would nag at him that her concern had been motherly. "You don't need to be there. You should be getting _sleep_."

Panic, at least, he'd learned to cover with a smile. "Are you serious?" he said. "Miss your celebrity debut? Not for the world, Carrots."

Their fight on the riverbed, lulled out of short term memory by the car ride, was coming back to him in dizzying spurts. She'd promised not to do anything reckless, but did she even understand the meaning of the word? 

If only she'd said something before, he could've coached her—had she not said anything on _purpose_?

"You're sweet," she said. 

Moose was less than fifty feet ahead. She drove slow, like they were in her three-wheeler, but to him it felt like she was speeding. 

"You've never given a press conference before," he said.

She shrugged, eyes facing ahead. "Well, no, but it can't be too hard. Answer the questions, done."

His dread was sliding up his throat, harder than a fist now and harsh with acid. "Nuh-uh," he said. "Fastest way to kill a career, answering the questions. The trick is—"

"You can give me the crash course tomorrow," she said, speaking right over his advice.

Right. It was all coming back to him now: every time he'd tried to drive a point home with her, she'd managed to completely misunderstand him. 

Maybe it would be smarter not to say anything. What was that saying about letting sleeping hounds lie?

She certainly wasn't a hound. She certainly wasn't sleeping. There was something happening to her posture, a shift back into lightness, and he knew her next words could have the potential to upend his life.

"You know," she said, "we do make a great team." 

She was so oblivious. Here he was trying to warn her, and there she was spouting off one cheesy line after the next. And yet he was pathetic too. There was a warmth in him at her words that he couldn't deny, that had lessened the acid.

Suddenly he could take her in as a presence. Exhaustion had started to take its toll, apparently. Her ears dangled to the sides of her head. Her eyelids drooped. There was a tension to her shoulders she probably wouldn't be able to sleep off. 

Maybe he was being harder on her than she deserved. Maybe he should give her this. "You think so?" he asked.

"I know so," she said.

So much warmth inside of him now, dissolving the acid like powder in water. There was pain in his throat that smarted but also felt right, a kind of just punishment. 

She was tired and they would figure it all out in the morning, when they'd both gotten some perspective and sleep. She was a child, really, not a fantasy, vulnerable and desperate for a friend. That was where the cheesiness came from, he realized: she didn't want to lose him.

He thought about leaning forward, kissing her on the cheek. Light, like an uncle would give his niece. 

Foxes didn't have rabbit nieces. Not even adopted ones. Never in the history of ever. Sometimes the strangeness of his own thoughts surprised even him.

The car had come to a halt before familiar steps. 

Dread hiked back up his throat, dragging sour feet. "Carrots . . ."

"Yeah?"

He was hit by a wave of something akin to homesickness. The words he wanted, they were lost. "Thanks for the ride," he said.

Paws coming off the wheel, she smiled with eyes that were snarled with weight at the corners. Even with sleepy eyes, her irises blazed like winter coat. 

When she opened her mouth, he could smell exhaustion. "Get some sleep, OK?"

His tremor was getting bad. He looked down at his paws, then mustered a smile. "I will if you will."

"Deal." And she smiled back, just her mouth. She looked older when she wasn't showing her bucktooth.

Well, there was nothing for it. He should've tried harder to stay with her, but he hadn't. For good reason. He couldn't trust himself.

He was sick. He needed his cure. He couldn't forget that. Just look at his trembling paws.

"Goodnight," he said.

He was opening the door when she reached forward and squeezed his paw. That warmth again, that warmth that did funny things to his head.

"Night," she said.

There it was again, the homesickness. Nick knew better than this. He knew it didn't mean anything.

He pulled away, opened the door, stepped out—and then regretted moving so fast, because she was already dragging the door shut behind him. In her thoughts, he saw, she was already driving away. 

Not so fast, he thought, and waved. He couldn't tell if she waved back; the car passed him too quickly.

He was alone.

*

From work—he did go up and secure a spare phone, if only to put some distance between Carrots and himself—the walk was less than ten minutes. 

Easier said than done.

As a child, Nick had learned to avoid streetlamps and surveillance cameras, because that was just how foxes walked. As a teenager, he'd learned how to resist that training. He thought a combination of both strategies could help him now. Under the lamplight, fully in view of the cameras, he kept his ears relaxed like he wasn't listening for suspicious sounds, his gait even like he saw no reason to run, and his head high like he was a different species of animal entirely. 

If he scurried, it was only in the blind spots between camera feeds, and in that one dark patch next to storefronts too expensive to have more than rental signs in the windows. If he became a fox in those moments, it was only because he had good reason to be afraid.

When he saw the green canopy, he felt the rush of knowing there were only a few steps left. He looked at the trimmed and potted bushes, the velvet rope, the carpet leading from the brass-trimmed door into the foyer, and thought: safety was written in those barriers.

Jesse was working the late shift tonight, looking menacing in his blue uniform, white cotton gloves stretched thin over gargantuan paws, and Nick had never been so glad to see a doorman. 

"Jesse, my man!" he said.

Like many elephants, Jesse had _opinions_ about foxes, but he'd learned to tolerate Nick. "Nicky, good to see you back!" 

It barely sounded forced. They hi-fived the air, Nick being unable to reach that high. 

He was feeling better and better by the second, and this was confidence, and this what Carrots made him forget. He sauntered down the carpet to the concierge, tail swinging behind him like the entire day had been a dream.

Ellen was eyeing him as though he were a disease-bearing insect, but she was so familiar that he could smile at her with all of his charm. Under the lamp over her station, her hide took on a sheen that matched the grey pearls around her neck. Then again: your skin matches your necklace, not the best compliment he'd ever invented.

Back to the classics. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes," he said.

"Can it, Wilde." Her trunk had inflated with disapproval, and in the meantime she seemed to have caught some of his scent: it crinkled further, like she'd smelled death. "Are you _drunk_?"

"No," he said. "No. I'm going up, Ellen."

The concierge had instructions to always let him through, since he had a key and was in the computer system and everything, but the building was theoretically prey-only, and Ellen was fastidious about protocol. Preds were dangerous, especially now, so Nick wasn't going to complain about her methods. But there were times when he wished she'd acknowledge he was different.

Like right now.

"A moment," she said, pulling out the intercom and dialing with movements so prim, it was almost impressive to see them executed by one of the largest mammals in existence. 

The connection didn't take immediately. Nick kept the annoyance from his expression, but his feet began tapping a restless rhythm against the floor.

She glared.

Suddenly her expression turned neutral. "Mr. Connors? My sincerest apologies for the disruption. Were you expecting a visitor at this hour?"

"Are you elephants hard of hearing or something?" he heard Chuck yell. "How many times do I have to tell you: the fox has a _key_!"

Nick felt his own smile.

"Have a good night," he said, already on his way to the elevators.

From the other side of closing doors, he saw her rubbing her ears. Chuck was loud, Nick thought, but didn't he have every right to be? She _had_ ignored his instructions. Or conveniently forgotten them. Hundreds of times.

He guessed it went to show that all those stereotypes about amazing elephant memory were just that: stereotypes. 

The car began to rise, and Nick remembered that the back was a mirror. He turned, winking for the security camera filming him from the upper right-hand corner. Ellen would be watching from her desk.

Wow.

Even after using his office detour to brush his fur and apply cologne, he looked like _shit_.

Patting down the fur on his cheeks and still smiling for the camera, he tried to anticipate Chuck's reaction. They'd be alone, for sure. Millicent and the kids were staying at the beach house in the Hamstertons—not that they ever came to the penthouse, they lived in the townhouse for a reason—and the maid went home after eight. 

Still, Nick would have to explain himself. It was late, he was unclean for all to see, and while Milly and the maid knew all about him, Daphne and Trevor were _kids_. And if Ellen ever decided to open her big mouth . . .

"Penthouse 55," announced the computer in the elevator. The car stabilized, brass doors opening into the hallway.

Marble floors, cool and slippery against his feet.

"You've got some nerve, showing up here at this hour."

Chuck spoke low and fast. He wore nothing but his bathrobe and was leaning on the penthouse door from the inside, sending the message that Nick was causing him great inconvenience.

"I know, I know," said Nick. "Let me in?"

Sniffing the air, Chuck caught what cologne had failed to dispel. "You _stink_."

Nick made his eyes dart to the security camera down the hall. "I'm sorry," he said.

With a disapproving cluck of his maw, Chuck stepped away from the door. Nick slipped past him, careful not to let his tail catch on the frame.

The less fur he left behind, the better.

The foyer carried sound into the hallway. Nick didn't stop walking until he was in the den. After days of running, the surroundings held something foreign. Wood panelling on the walls, dark parquet, oriental carpets beneath heavy wooden furniture, a wooden bar with thick glass tumblers and an old-fashioned soda maker—was there a reason everything had to be made of wood?

Woodchuck jokes, and being around Carrots had almost made him forget. Inappropriate, _Nicky_.

He closed his eyes, letting scent do the talking. Oiled wood, of course. Then the real signs of welcome: whisky, stale cigarettes, the bouquet of a recently smoked cigar.

Strength and safety.

Chuck had long toenails. Nick followed his approach with his ears, opening his eyes right on time. "We found them," he said.

"How did Lionheart take it?"

"He's in prison."

Chuck's demeanor softened. "Go take a bath," he said. "I'll wait for you here."

Nick never said thank you in these situations. He was too nervous, and it was a good thing, really, that he'd never learned to stop being nervous about making himself clean. He couldn't ever be clean enough.

Hoo boy, did he have his work cut out for him today.

Chuck's bathroom was something of a palace, if one scaled for animals of their size. Back during the remodeling, oh, ten years ago? green had been all the rage. The walls—Nick still remembered when they'd been tiled white—were covered in jade-like slabs of marble. Even the tub and sink had been carved out of green stone, transparent like alabaster.

Mesmerized by the cascade of water against the cold surface, it took a whiff of his own fear-scent for Nick to remember the tasks at hand.

He'd need his strongest shampoo, salts and a cigarette, and desperate amounts of brushing and cologne. 

Maybe he _was_ getting old, he thought, feeling his knees protest as he squatted down to open the cupboard beneath the sink. Chuck let him keep a whole box of products here, but Milly really didn't want the kids to find them, so they were hidden behind the toilet paper and the draino and the plastic bin with reserve razors and cleaning fluid and the garbage bags and—

God, he thought, ferreting past it all and still not finding his stuff, could she have made it any harder?

Not that he was complaining. Milly had been so great to him from the start, he owed her big, and lookie here! that was definitely his box with the combination lock on it. 

Not so hard after all.

Rummaging through the contents, he pulled the laundry bag out first. Very important, making sure his clothes were kept separate from the rest of the laundry. Bath salts, shampoo, conditioner came out next, then his reserve lighter and pack of cigarettes, then his cologne. Combs and brushes he'd take out later, but he did pick out the scrubbers for the base of his tail and ass.

The water was high enough, and hot enough, so he turned off the spigot, threw in the bath salts, and stripped. His clothes really did stink, he thought, holding them away from his muzzle as he stuffed them into the laundry bag.

How could Carrots _stand_ it? It was like she didn't have a nose or something.

And she was so _nosy_. There was tragedy in this somewhere.

Scouring all that muck off was exhausting. Nick needed a break. Maybe a new frame of mind too, while he was at it.

Floating in the fragrant water with a cigarette dangling from his mouth—the tub was big enough to hold a party of five floating foxes—he let his mind stray to the old questions. Why _was_ the tub big enough for five of him? All that gold rimming the mirror over the sink—what was it _for_? 

Nothing, he concluded, as he always did. Everything was for nothing.

Thinking was for nothing. Foxes were supposedly thinkers by nature. Nick had been a thinker once, until he'd wisened up. If you were thinking, you were missing out on this warm bath. This luxurious, cocooning sensation. With your mind fixed on the future or the past, you forgot about _this_ time, the time that never existed except to slip away, the time that smelled of wafting salts and smoke and clean, well-scrubbed fur. 

Here, savagery was only a dream.

Water plopped from the leaky spigot into the bath, a drip he'd timed to fall every twenty-two seconds. See? the drip seemed to say. Nothing lasted, not even this gold-encrusted, marble-fitted monstrosity of an endeavor to lend an appearance of dignity to the basest moments of existence, to shitting and shedding and stinking up the world.

Not much more to life in the end.

The end of a smoke was rarely satisfying: it always came too soon. Nick crushed the cigarette hull into the tub's ashtray and considered lighting another, just for that start, that thrill, that smoldering pull into the fire.

Smoking put him in mind of death. Nick had faced death enough over the past few days to no longer find it so frightening, but the idea of _causing_ it was . . . was why he needed to be clean. 

He flipped open the reserve pack and counted the cigarettes inside. If tomorrow was anything like what dread anticipated, he'd need every remaining stick. 

Besides, Chuck had the most incredible fur-dryer, over a hundred different settings. Roasting himself dry was pretty much the next best thing.

In an idle moment while combing his fur to softness, he thought of Carrots. 

Her philosophy was radically different, for sure. Heh, he could already hear her. Life isn't for _nothing_ , she'd say. I'll prove it to you!

Just don't get yourself killed, kiddo, he thought.

The comb snagged on a burr. He picked it out, pulling out a whole tuft of fur to do so, and the stab of pain made him realize what was happening to him. There was a catch in his throat, one he hadn't felt since he was a kit. 

Not that it took much effort to subdue it. 

That's right. Focus on becoming clean. 

Someone had tried to keep it from being seen, folding it beneath towels and fluffy marmot bath gowns, but Nick knew to look for his own robe at the bottom of the pile. Dark blue with silver moons on it, the unmistakeable fox-tail opening at the back, and he tied it around his waist with the sash.

And with that, he was ready.

The den was large enough to comfortably accommodate giraffes, not that Chuck had any giraffe friends. Next to the wooden bar and a television as large as a car, the most important piece of furniture was the U-shaped sofa, a special order designed to seat the entire troop. Both Nick _and_ Chuck were dwarfed by it. 

More often than not, they ended up sharing a cushion. 

Not today, Nick realized. Instead of waiting for him on their cushion, Chuck was smoking a cigar in the armchair sized for him alone.

Exhaling, he looked Nick up and down. "Better," he said. 

Nick leapt onto the cushion closest to the armchair, curling up with tail draped over his legs. "Want the whole shebang?" he asked.

"Give me the highlights."

Easy enough, since Nick had given the full version once already. Savage degenerates, failed coverup, a zillion arrests including Lionheart. End of story.

Well, almost. "There'll be a press conference tomorrow morning," he added.

Chuck lowered his cigar. There was a bitterness to his eyes that was intriguing. "I want you there," he said. "That ewe could stand to be reminded how she got here."

OK, then.

Nick thought about protesting. Instead, he bowed his head. 

He would've gone anyway, if only to keep Carrots in line. If Chuck wanted him there, even better. It didn't matter that he didn't understand the reason. 

Except that not-understanding nagged at him. Despite her . . . unorthodox choice of plan, Dawn didn't strike him as a deal-breaker. What was actually the problem here?

He shouldn't care. None of the details concerned him; they could only corrupt him. 

But he hated feeling like he was out of the loop, and that hatred of feeling stupid moved his mouth. "She's not Lionheart, you know."

"That's your dick talking." 

Hah!

Nick settled back against the sofa, using the movement to hide his wagging tail. He thought he understood now.

He put more weight onto his tail. Much as he wanted to snicker, that would _not_ go over well.

Chuck didn't like women. Didn't matter if he had to sleep with them or work with them, he hated being around women. The exceptions were family, and only because of some internalized motto about blood being thicker than water, blah blah blah, Nick's mother had a similarly pernicious explanation for why he _needed_ to settle down and have kits with this or that vixen, and he was getting way off topic here.

The thing was, the thing that Chuck both exploited and resented more than anything—Nick didn't have that problem. Men, women, what attracted him was confidence, strength, a certain energy. He'd had a _great_ time with Dawn, for instance.

Was he a bad fox for getting a kick out of this? 

Of course he was. That was why he was here. 

Sly smile, and he pretended to be dreaming. "I've gotta say, her energy was incredible," he said. "If she applies even a fraction of that to politics . . ."

Chuck bared his incisors like the thing he wanted most in the world was to gnaw on one of her bones. If Nick were still in possession of a figurative heart, this display would've warmed it. 

Still, he felt his smile widening.

"She's a double-crosser if I ever saw one," said Chuck. "I'll remind you to be careful around her, Nicky. Give her what she _thinks_ she wants, but reveal nothing, understand?"

"You mean—"

"She likes you, Nicky. We can use that. All I'm saying is to be careful."

What a downer. 

Nick had come here to be cured, not to be sent to other healers. Was he _such_ a bad fox?

"Sure, boss," he said.

There was no point to being depressed, so cheered himself up by recalling how incredibly inventive she'd been. Sure, so some of the stuff they'd done had been a little _edgy_ , maybe even a whole lot intenser than he was used to, but it wasn't like he couldn't take it, and she'd seemed to really _see_ him, which was what counted.

He'd enjoyed it once, so he'd enjoy it again. And it wasn't like this _changed_ anything, but . . . 

Could she actually make preds go savage? Or was it more like a science of predicting where and when it would happen? Or-or could he breathe easy, knowing she was just capitalizing on Lionheart's mistakes?

This stuff was way above his pay-grade, but Chuck had to understand where he was coming from. Given what he was asking Nick to do, in fact, this might be considered essential information.

"Is she actually making them—you know?" he asked.

Chuck had been dragging on his cigar. Now his eyes grew tight and creased at the corners, like he was watching Nick trip over carpet and fall onto his face. 

He exhaled, a big cloud that travelled to the couch. "Now, now, Nicky, that's nothing for you to worry that pretty head about."

Resentment, hot and unexpected. 

Nick had to bite down on his tongue and tell himself that Chuck was _right_. _Thinking_ about the case had more potential to endanger him than any savage's teeth or claws. If anyone was in the wrong here, it was _Carrots_ , not Chuck.

Chuck was just protecting him, he thought.

Except . . . "Could it affect me?"

"No, baby," said Chuck.

And something had to be wrong with him, because instead of feeling relieved, instead of feeling wanted and cocooned, it was like these words had unlatched the cage.

Looking back, he would embellish the image. The fox had sprung out, beelining for the rabbit's wild traces. Because he'd fallen into fox-think right then.

What did that mean, he _couldn't_ be affected? That there _wasn't_ some savage instinct written in his DNA? See, that sounded too much like unicorn babies and rainbows, and Chuck was probably saying something simpler, like that the virus was carefully contained—except then there would still be a _risk_ , wouldn't there, and could Chuck be _lying_ to him? 

There was an obviously degenerate thought. 

All he meant, probably, was that there wasn't any risk because there was a cure. Only— _would_ Chuck make sure to cure him, if something happened? 

Was this the equivalent of a promise?

"Thinking doesn't suit you," said Chuck, and of course he was right, he was always right, hadn't Nick been thinking the exact same thing only moments before?

_Carrots_ , he thought, had infected him with the thinking bug, and she needed to get _out of his head_ —

Should he tell Chuck about Manchas swiping him? he wondered with his heart thudding in his throat. Because if it was a virus, then he needed that cure _right now_. And—

"Do I need to repeat myself?"

There was a scent building between them, anger and threat and the funk of desire, and it managed what he himself could not. Anger, threat, and desire, _they_ were the cure, and they pulled him back into the now.

This was why he was here, Nick reminded himself. He felt as shaky as that one time in the hospital when he'd spent weeks being fed from a tube, and this was why he needed Chuck so badly. 

This was why, no matter how often he was sent to others, no matter how Milly tried to hide him, no matter what nasty things the kids would one day shout—this was why he'd stay. As long as Chuck would have him.

"Better," said Chuck, undoing the cloth belt on his waist.

He put down his cigar, brows knotting like old wood. "Now come here."

Nick closed his eyes as he freed his own sash, letting his nostrils fill with scent memory and knowledge. This was his cure, of that he was now certain.

I need it so much, he thought.

The leap of his own desire was sudden and powerful. He opened his eyes to leap himself, to spring out of his robe so his paws met the ground first. 

Chuck's exposed belly, directly at eye level.

Look at how strong the fox was, how fast on all fours. Savage, all it would take was a pounce to break skin. Nick imagined it was like bursting a fat grape, only that the flesh would look like guts and the juices would smell of iron. 

This was why he always approached like a base animal—back bent low, tail sweeping the ground, crouched down on all fours—to remind himself of what needed to be purged.

As a fox, he slunk over to knees awaiting him like an altar. His muzzle, placed atop them, was the sacrifice. 

Make me clean.

(Kissing was the literal sacrifice. Nick had found ways to use his tongue, but his teeth were a heathen presence. If they were brazen enough to emerge, they'd be packed away into a muzzle.)

Chuck reached over him for the collar and leash, placed out in the open next to his resting cigar. Their contract and the physical declaration of consent. 

Nick held still as the plastic was fastened around his neck. Chuck petted him while they went on, and the contact redoubled his sense of trust, loyalty, gratitude.

Leashed, he was getting better. Like this, he could be commanded to be well.

His paws trembled against the ground. They were poor foundations, much like the rest of him. Alone, he would crumble. Alone, he would kill and be killed.

Chuck let go of the collar, wrapping the end of the leash around one paw. He sat back, still stroking Nick's head with the other. "There's a good boy," he said.

Desire and anger, a musk like redemption.

Nick surged forward to worship the source, long, languid strokes that caught the fur up against the spines on his tongue. Many animals found this painful.

Chuck tolerated it, because he knew how greedy Nick was. You couldn't cure someone without understanding his weaknesses. 

Today he was in a less forgiving mood, grabbing Nick by the ruff before he could get enough of the taste he wanted. Gnarled nails slid beneath the top of the collar. The bottom compressed against Nick's esophagus.

"I smelled that bunny on you," said Chuck.

Nick was protesting before he could think. "It's not like that—"

Chuck rumbled like a falling tree, striking him silent. "Only I can give you what you need," he went on. "Not that scheming ewe, not some _simpleton_ rabbit."

Yes.

"Don't you ever forget it. You're mine."

"Yes," said Nick, gasping it out against the collar. "Yes, I am."

"Mine, do you hear?"

"Yes!"

It was his prayer.

*

But it couldn't bring him sleep. 

Nick and the fox were enemies by day. Then, he had weapons: cologne, warm baths, cigarettes, priests to lock it away.

Caging it was the easy part. The hard part was finding a way to delay its inevitable escape. And here, in the darkness where no-one could see them, it always found some way. Here, with the lights out and Chuck snoring and oblivious, Nick was forced to tolerate its presence.

Now it was trying to talk to him. What an attention whore.

The fox wanted to think about savagery. Nick just wanted to bask in his cure. The fox was a menace, a giggler and a fear-stink and a little shit taunting him with bare canines, and it would never stop being bad. 

The only way to one-up it, Nick decided, was to think about something _better_.

The universe was filled with unanswered questions. Nick wasn't interested in more than a pawful. Such as—why were foxes so stupid? and—what had drawn Chuck to him in the first place?

See, this was highly bewildering, when you thought about it. Even the fox couldn't resist such a puzzle.

Nick hadn't been suave. His mother had called him a butterfly, but what he remembered wasn't graceful, it was shame and hunger and embarrassment all gathered inside him like corrosive substances that should never be mixed.

He hadn't been attractive, either. Back then, too small for his age, even other foxes had assumed he was in grade school. 

He hadn't even been all that subtle. Even Gus had figured out he was queer, and Gus was one of the stupidest wildebeests alive. Actually, scratch that, there was no _way_ he'd figured it out on his own. Ed must've told him.

Ed was a private eye for a reason. Ed being Ed, he'd also spent more time laughing at the _queerdo_ than explaining what any of it meant. 

But Ed had supported him. Unlike Nick's family. He would never forgive his cousins for calling him a _girl_ , his mother for shouting at him to snap out of it, Dad would've never tolerated this kind of _nonsense_.

Chuck, on the other hand—and this was the actual point—Chuck had been the definition of suave, attractive, and subtle. Even more so back then. Rich, clever, and he'd always smelled so good, like safety and strength and stolen smokes in the woods.

Nick had been so clumsy, so cold-hearted by comparison. Drawing blood on their first kiss? Textbook definition of a screw-up right there. 

(Fourteen going on fifteen, his canines had seemed less formidable than they would turn out to be, and Chuck had started off bold and unafraid. Nick had never been able to replicate the happiness he'd felt in that moment.)

Here was the incredible bit. Instead of throwing him out, instead of giving up on him, Chuck had guided him into something _better_.

Take that, fox.

The details didn't matter. Nick preferred not to think about them, actually, because those halcyon days were gone. The less he thought about the two scouts in their tent and something like love, the less there was to miss.

What remained was immense gratitude, and pride, and more than a little curiosity. What on earth could've compelled someone like Chuck to choose someone like _him_?

They'd been in the same boat at the same time, maybe that was why? In his memories, Chuck was as nervous as he was, if a lot more enlightened. At the time, Nick hadn't been aware of the kind of risk Chuck was taking, telling him those magic words: it was alright, he felt the same, and there was nothing wrong with what they were, although they _had_ to keep it a secret. Chuck didn't tell him he could be disowned until years later. 

He'd taken a great leap of faith that day. _Why_?

Anyone could've seen them. Chuck had kissed him right there in their tent.

Nick's yelp when the blood had started to flow—anyone could've heard.

It didn't make sense. It would never make sense, Nick thought. Why trust the kid from _Happytown_ with such a damning secret?

You know why, said the fox.

Nick's concept of love had taken something of a hit after Milly, and again after the kids, and then again and again over the years, as Chuck had risen to the helm of the family business and he'd had to learn to settle into his current role. He'd gotten over all of it, he was perfectly content now, but he also knew it had changed something for him. 

Love was powerlessness, he'd decided. Love was burning for no reason at all. Love was sinking in water with a lit cigarette in your mouth, staring at green marble and wondering why the fuck it was there.

Love was nothing, really.

_Mine_ was a little more powerful. _Mine_ was a cure. _Mine_ solved so many problems.

But, said the fox.

Grinning with silver teeth, it raised claws to count. _Mine_ wasn't a ring around his finger. _Mine_ wasn't a kit adopted in his name. _Mine_ was a nebulous contract without witnesses, and while the power it carried was tangible, while the power it carried could cure, it rested on dubious ground. _Mine_ only meant something as long as Chuck backed it with belief.

He won't much longer, said the fox. You should run while you can.

Not me, Nick thought.

Not me, it won't be me. 

He closed his eyes. The fox sneered and ran into the darkness, and Nick buried his snout in fur cleaned for the third time that day and blankets that smelled of Milly's favorite soap and all the things that he'd done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stuff on eyeshine is an absolute fiction. I read somewhere that fox eyeshine can vary between red and blue, and rabbit eyeshine between red and orange, and then used that to further my silly elemental theme for the characters (fire-water versus earth-air).
> 
> Originally, this chapter didn't show what Nick gets up to after Judy drops him off. I decided to write that out, but if you think it detracts or gets too weird or inconsistent with the rest, that would be very helpful to know. 
> 
> Also, I made a tumblr: @neurasthenicfox. Feel free to ask or submit anything.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was hellish, it's been through countless drafts. I had to plumb from many sources to get anywhere (see notes below), and it still wouldn't work, and it still isn't right, but I'm at the point where only your thoughts can help it improve. My university asked me to step in and teach four days a week at the very last minute. This is why I haven't responded to all of your wonderful comments and ideas yet—I will soon, promise—I haven't had the mind for words. 
> 
> Unfortunately, updates will slow down even more during this semester. I tossed out most of the original draft of the next act and have the material for it, but it needs to be written properly. My sincere apologies, and thanks for your patience.
> 
> Some forewarning: originally the whole chapter was regular internal monologue, but there were points were that didn't feel open enough to me, disorderly enough. I sometimes went for stream of consciousness—the hands-off stuff, with minimal punctuation and reporting verbs—in what may have been an extremely misguided attempt to try and make form and content jive. Let me know if it's too much of a pain to read. If you feel it lessens the impact of the material, that would also be really useful to know.

Judy was climbing the stairs in her apartment building and it was boring, so she took out her phone and saw missed calls from her parents that she somehow hadn't heard. She wasn't used to having her own phone and after the debacle with Lionheart ( _not their fault_ , she reminded herself) she'd put it on vibrate, and—

_everything ok there, pumpkin?_  9:32  
_say something jude, we're starting to worry_  10:09  
_your shift must have ended by now, judy, where are you?_  10:46  
_young lady, if we don't hear from you soon_  11:04

—she didn't need to read their _shoot how many dozens_ of text messages to know they'd already packed their bags and would be standing on her doorstep in the morning if she didn't send some life sign.

She didn't feel like writing, writing pulled at her like the river still drying in her fur. She ground her teeth against the pull.

_Long day at work sorry I'll call tomorrow everything's going great ♥_

Pocketing her phone, keying open her door, she realized what the pull was.

Time. It moved so differently in the city. 

She hadn't been away from the apartment for more than a day, really, and yet it looked like she'd been away for weeks. Her desk had acquired a new layer of charcoal-like dust. So too had the window mantle. Probably auto exhaust, it turned to a film of grime when she tried wiping it with her paws. And the air was stale, and it smelled like a black thing rotting in a veiled corner, and if she didn't open the window now she was gonna—

Smile, because of the cool, fresh air. 

The window only opened a crack. Fourth floor, they were probably worried someone would fall out or jump, and Judy might've found this annoying if the idea of her own window weren't so novel. This was freedom in sliver-form, cool and fresh and complete with a view. One she could appreciate even more now that she'd just driven through it. _There_ was the Earth Trade Center, _there_ was Moose Capital, and—and wasn't that an odd thought. Was _he_ still out there, charging a phone in some office outlet?

Nick, she thought, with the thrill of catching him unawares. 

To the sliver of freedom she put her nose. A breeze kissed it, and she was back in the car and he was sucking out the oxygen like he was stoking a fire inside. She owed him cigarettes, she thought. She should buy him new cigarettes, and now she was picturing the torches her family brought out every year for the spring ritual: pale wood, smeared pitch, the diamond of expanding flame, the gases rising hungry and fast, their shimmer morphing into inky trails.

Chemistry lessons. Combustion, the oxygen combined with . . .

Lingering sun on black plastic and that was the garbage down there, wasn't it, stacked for collection on the sidewalk. Bagged litter had corrupted her breeze. She was no longer back home with her wild torch, she was standing in an apartment that smelled like the skin of grease papering its foundations.

Now she smelled sewage. Hidden in canals behind the walls; rising from the roots of her fur. Something else had lodged in her as well, sweet as rotting fruit and carnivorous flowers and that forest slime after a long rain. Gathered leaves, white fungi, trodden insects all mashed as one.

The moment she became aware of it, she had to shut the window, pull down the yellowing drapes, and strip.

Fox-fear, and she didn't understand how it had spread to her. They hadn't touched more than paws. It must've traveled by air, and no wonder Mr. World's Most Expensive Perfume had been so out-of-sorts. He didn't understand how she ticked.

Don't be ashamed, she thought he should know. You should come out to our farm, see what life out there smells like. After a few minutes, you start focusing on other things.

Stop the clocks. Nick on a farm, sorting through seed and dirt in flannel and jeans, aviators protecting his eyes from real sun.

She wanted to laugh, because, well, it would _never_ happen. Easier to imagine him in glossy black and sheer white, stirring a cocktail and eyeing a dance with eyes that moved only to smirk. He would smell of expensive wood and tar stuck to the back of her throat.

Shower basket, fluffy towel over her arm, and she was slipping into her robe when she pictured him again. The moment he got home he'd start scrubbing himself raw, she thought. She got a flash of the look on his face: the wrinkle of disgust, the furrow of impatience. 

That was his problem, she thought. He was so obsessed with how _others_ saw him, he forgot to see himself.

( _well if it isn't_ judge judy)

At least he had his own bathroom. He must be glad to have it back to himself, she thought. Not in a million years would he take to Bunnyburrow, where even her parents shared facilities. Their family was large but small.

She was also glad to be alone. She didn't need Nick to laugh at her robe, the carrots in the pattern. The belt had come undone already. She had a vision of it crumpling, sending the halves apart, as she walked to the bathroom. She grabbed it with force and tied it with a double Bunny Scout knot.

Looks like this calls for a Ranger Scout, she could hear him say. Here, let me.

She pushed open her door, stepping out into the hallway. What her parents would say when she told them, she thought. Foxes are the worst. It's in their biology, and the fact that Nick would agree with them didn't stop her ears from heating to the tips, like radiant carriers of shame.

My best friend, my _best_ friend. Small but large. She liked him least when he was familiar. When his words echoed sounds of home.

She passed one unit, then another. Two more units to reach the bathroom. It loomed ahead with its brown door. She was in nothing but her robe and the towel over her arm and she regretted not bringing her police radio. Nothing was going to happen. A bear lived here. So did a family of fishers. An anteater, too, and a capybara. You'll be sharing, the landlady had said. 

A push of her shoulder against the brown door, and she stepped into—

A crime scene. 

Judy ignored the tightness of her skin. It had gone cold and the fur was rising. Someone had left a lot of brown fur on the floor, that was all. 

There was tear-free shampoo next to a rusting sink, the metal pearly with age. She would've heard if a bear had gone savage in her own building. A child had gotten a fur-cut, the parents—the babysitter—had neglected to clean up afterward, and that was all.

She stepped into a shower stall. No-one had gone savage. The fur on the floor, it was part of the city experience. She didn't like nearing it. She didn't like the shower curtain made grey with lime-water, the traces curving downward like fish-scales. She didn't like what was growing brown in the grout or that smell of fur mouldering in the drain. But she had rubber shoes. She had shoes for the shower, she'd never owned shoes like this before, and life was novel and the water was cold and she was shivering.

But she felt warm.

Nick, she thought, would tell her parents what they wanted to hear. She'd hate it, but they'd like him. It would be a start. She'd be allowed to have him to herself, she'd take him to the twisty tree and show him the shaded paths. Sharla had always clutched her arm until it was bloodless; he'd be different. Because he was a fox, the fox-markings on the paths wouldn't frighten him. They'd slide down the steep hill to the stream and he'd grin at the fish with teeth dappled by the canopy of the forest.

We'll drown, Sharla used to say. Wanna swim? Nick would say.

Wanna swim.

When she returned to her room, the bear-fur was forgotten. She was dry and warm. She was covered by pajamas that smelled of Cottontail's Best, and she could picture the box sitting on the washer at home, what he'd say about fluffy cottontails in fluffy clothes.

From under the desk lamp, her phone blinked like a predatory eye. 

Oh, _shoot_.

She'd forgotten about work. She'd forgotten why she'd come home in the first place. She'd forgotten the real reason she needed space from the fox who could sound too much like home.

The hardness of her chair and the cold weight of the phone were soon what she'd forgotten. She was scrolling through photographic evidence, files already emailed to the precinct. She wanted to know she was not only picturing reality in her mind. 

She hesitated before playing the video.

". . . consider their biology," said the medical advisor. 

The medical advisor was a nurse, Judy had learned. Not a doctor. Not a researcher. She was a badger, and that was the most interesting detail. Their biology, she'd said, like badgers and lions weren't predators of the same stripe. _Their_ biology, and Judy could picture Mom talking about foxes and Dad talking about bears, and these weren't some faceless predators. This was Nick they were talking about like an infectious disease. This was Nick, grinning at streaks of fish, and someday parasites would hatch out of his body, leaving nothing behind but the shell of the fox she—

She paused the video and turned off the screen. 

The phone reflected her face in glass smudged with prints. She sat back and tried to empty her mind of the sense of creepiness. The first time she'd felt this way, she'd been in the third grade. Like now, it had all been a fantasy. Jason had started it, he'd laughed at her for grinding her teeth through classics. Mrs. Thumper won't give you extra points for those. Jason had gone through one horror story after the other, he'd scored the highest monthly page count in their class. Once Judy'd caught on she hadn't been able to stop. She'd won herself more pizza than she could stomach with her dedication to the genre.

The stories had been predictable. Silly, even. She'd felt, even then, that she could write something better. She'd grown to think nothing could scare her, had picked up one about a ventriloquist and his puppet without second thought. The puppet had gotten revenge on the ventriloquist, and she'd closed the book and looked at the stuffed toys on her bed. 

Their eyes had gleamed.

_Stories_ , nothing more.

She ran a paw across her eyes and saw Nick in the strip of darkness. Sorry, Carrots, this is _reality_.

Them and us. Them and us. Them and _you_ and _me_. Destiny's a congenital disease.

Up and down, she rubbed the lengths of her arms. Her body was having trouble adjusting to all the different temperatures. The high had been over ninety-five in the city center that afternoon. The animals at Cliffside had paced in air-conditioned cages of glass, like the doctors thought they were reptiles and could be made to fall asleep if the temperature was low enough.

She wasn't going to speak of a _them_ , she decided. _Them_ was the driving plot of a story, _they_ were a group of _victims_.

Her phone blinked at her. She turned on the screen and swiped until she reached what she thought was her first photograph of Cliffside. Brain scans that told her nothing. She swiped one back to be sure she hadn't forgotten anything.

Scouts, grinning at her past the distortion of her own reflection in glass. Her photograph of the photograph wasn't very clear at all. 

She should go back to the evidence, but the picture exerted a pull. She found herself zooming into the center until Connors became an amorphous stain. A form of mockery. She slid a finger around to get a better look at the others.

Ed Hayes, here a yellow blob. The zebra and wildebeest and hippo, faded smudges whose names she didn't know. When she zoomed back out, she saw more of herself than them.

The only figure she'd caught with any distinctness was Nick, standing to the edge of her reflection like he was critiquing her poor show of skill. On the small screen he came across as a sharp slash of color. Black and red and cream; the forest green uniform. She zoomed into his face.

So young.

What had happened, other than time? She remembered, in the car, how he'd sucked the oxygen out. Like a fire burning too fast, his fear: the fear he was now old. She didn't understand it. She wanted to be thirty. She wanted to be settled in her own skin, experienced, _respected_ . . .

I'm alone, he'd seemed to say. I'm alone unless you say you want to be with me, respected only if you say you like me, experienced only if you say you covet my skin. 

_Would you date me_ , she thought, was Nick-speak for _am I good enough_.

The question returned to her the feeling of cold. The light of the desk lamp seemed to settle in her fur like flakes of ice. She was shivering under its frozen beam; she was back in the water hoping Nick would open his eyes and find her, fearing what she'd find when she opened hers. What Nick was really asking, she thought, was whether she'd have left him suspended there.

We almost died, she thought.

The phone sank in her paws. She looked at the boy suspended in film and glass and light and pixels and thought, you almost died because of me. 

The boy gazed back at her with ears edged gold from distortion. She thought of the giant wings of swallowtails and felt a catch in her throat. She squinted at him until more gold seemed to come out in his fur, until the smirking boy became the smirking adult who'd passed her a passion fruit like a satchel of coins.

She zoomed in until his face was a blend of pixels.

You almost died and I don't even know who you are. 

_You tell me, Carrots._

Judy mastered the catch in her throat, the lever to her tears. She put the phone face-down on her desk, because she didn't need to be talking to the photograph any longer.

I'll tell you alright, she thought. 

*

". . . and the mercury's expected to climb to the upper 90s today, looks like those air-conditioners will be working hard. Remember, an air quality health advisory has been issued for Savanna Central — ground level ozone is no joke, folks, so limit the outdoor activities if you can . . ."

*

Morning was hard.

He ached, he'd barely slept, he was filled with dread. He wished Carrots had never told him about this press conference. 

Sun pierced the bathroom window, sending him squinting. He only kept one black suit here, so at least that choice had been easy. The problem was finding a matching tie—no easy task, Milly took perverse pleasure in sorting her ties beneath her underwear—and then knotting it when his mind was elsewhere and his coordination totally shot.

The maid ended up doing it for him. Windsor knot, her speciality. He tried to smile while she was at it. 

She was a coyote and almost twice his size. This intimidated him, and intimidation always made him look aggressive.

In response, she pulled the knot to his throat with excessive force. "You not supposed to come here when you are ill," she said. "I catch it."

"Who's ill?" he said, making a point of looking around. 

His paw went to his chest and he let his eyes widen. "Me? Teresa, darling, you've been watching too many soap operas."

"You _loco_ ," she muttered, stepping back and wiping her paws like she was glad to be free of him. "I wish you stay home."

What a great start to the day.

Patting at his pockets once she'd stalked off to vacuum the bedroom, he realized he'd left the repellant in yesterday's clothes and had to go through his laundry bag to find it. Lovely. Now his paws _reeked_ , and what if water had gotten into the canister and it didn't work anymore?

Should he test it? he wondered, aiming the nozzle at the sink. 

What if the cloud travelled? He really could do without feeling the effects himself. Except . . .

Never mind, this was too hard. He pocketed the damn thing, thinking he could get some real pepper spray later. It was just a silly precaution anyway.

"Bye, Teresa."

"Go to hell!"

Teresa had been in Milly's family for years. Nick could understand, he really could.

Arthur was waiting for him downstairs with one of the firm's black cars. Nick was surprised, but slid into the back seat like this was an everyday occurrence.

"This is unexpected," he said.

"Boss said you'd be running late," said Arthur. He sounded peeved—understandably, it was no fun to have to wait in a car under the beating hot sun. Nick could guess he was thinking about how much he wanted to go spray some water on himself.

"Now that's odd, because I'm never late," he said.

The moment Arthur turned his attention to the road, however, Nick glanced at his watch. 

Yeah, alright, he was running a little late. It wasn't entirely intentional.

Even for a hippo, Arthur was slow on his feet. Too many helpings of fried grass, a busted knee, and a sitting job, and it was no wonder he weighed more than most. Put him in a car, though, and he was one of the fastest drivers in the city. They were parking in the back-street closest to the police department before Nick could figure out why Chuck had bothered to arrange any of this.

"Guess I'll see you later, big guy," he said, reaching for the door while the other paw hunted for cigarettes. "Thanks for the lift."

"I'll wait."

"Thanks, but no."

"Boss wants a report."

Translation: no more running around with the rabbit. "I know, I'll take a cab back as soon as it's over."

"No," said Arthur.

"You'll dry out before it's over," Nick said. What? It was true. "Look, I've got this."

Black against bubblegum pink, Arthur smiled—or more accurately, he opened freakishly horned lips to show the roots of his enlarged incisors and canines. Once, he'd used those very same teeth to spear his own sister in the leg. 

The _hell_ , Nick thought, aware of his heart picking up speed.

He welcomed the spike of aggression. It made for some of his best smiles. "Your choice," he said.

And if Arthur had anything else to add, he didn't get it out before Nick had leapt onto the pavement.

The car door was too big for him to slam, but he came close. The hairs on his tail were rising one by one, and he thought of the reanimated dead. He thought: Arthur wasn't his boss. Arthur couldn't stomp on his tail and laugh anymore. Arthur was _lucky_ to have a job, Arthur lived in a mud-pile in the stinking _Canals_ , Arthur was on medication to keep him from going psycho on the rest of them, because Arthur, believe it or not, was basically a _predator_ , and someone that low in the pecking order sure as _hell_ wasn't going to tell Nick what to do.

With his back to the car, he stuck a cigarette between his teeth and lit it right where he stood.

Arthur honked the horn. Nick turned his head to show off the curve of his smile.

It's called dawdling on purpose, he thought. _Suck it_ , fatso.

But the smoke was pretty much ruined. He'd been thinking instead of savoring the start, and things could only go downhill from here. 

Tucking the lighter away, he shoved one paw into a pocket and used the other to hold the cigarette. Now that he thought about it, Arthur was only the latest in a long string of recent offenders. _Everyone_ was treating him like a kit these days.

He wasn't going to run off with a rabbit. He wasn't fourteen and desperate. He didn't need a _minder_. He knew exactly what he was and exactly what it took to fix it, he'd found his place in the world and he was proud of it, and—

Carrots.

Standing in the shadow of big words, POLICE painting ears quivering like the eggs grandma used to cook and peel for breakfast before tearing into them the whites had jiggled between her teeth

(run)

fallen out her mouth slivers like when Ed clipped his hooves yellow crumbs all over the table I told you to eat your breakfast Nicholas

(faster)

air sick with ammonia rot flowers white mold a forest drowned

"Nick!"

"Carrots!"

"You _came_."

"I-I should've been here earlier."

"You came," she said, and Nick's breathing was out of whack but he'd composed himself enough to catch the repeat. 

She was really worked up. Nose twitching, the sheen to her eyes that shivered like after the waterfall, when all he'd been able think about was how she was ignoring the fact she'd almost died and how stupid he was for wanting to drape a coat over her shoulders.

He was still trying to catch his breath. "Sure," he said. "I told you I would."

The cigarette was singing the fur of his paw. His paw was trembling like it wanted to drop the whole charade, but he managed to get the filter to his mouth.

Better. 

Smoke curling against his tongue, the shot-put of pleasure, and he could study her now, how she rubbed the sides of her arms with her paws like she was cold.

"I'm so nervous," she said.

He couldn't send her into a press conference wearing his jacket. Let's run away, where there's snow, we'll smoke on the fire escape, huddle together until our fur is warm. He took the cigarette out of his mouth like it was the heater they'd gather round.

The summer sun was already experimenting with the air around them, synthesizing ozone and other poison in heat that branded his feet and he was holding it out to her—

"One drag won't hurt." 

—and would look ridiculous taking it back now.

"You sure about that, Wilde?" but it was the light in her eyes that was interesting, the light that said she was actually considering his offer.

When she looked at him like that, like he was worth taking seriously, it made him feel like a con-artist. That was the only reason he was surprised she could be so casual. Casually intimate when she drew the stick from his fingers, and she was supposed to be the nervous one.

"Thanks," she said.

She didn't sputter after inhaling, even though her cheeks puffed out like sails. He kind of wanted her to cough so he could laugh, prove to her he wasn't what she thought he was; it was dawning on him that she might've done this before, and that _she_ wasn't what he'd thought she was.

"OK, Press Conference 101," he said. 

He wasn't here to _think_. He was here to make sure she didn't screw them both over. "You wanna look smart, answer their question with your own question and then answer _that_ question."

She gazed at him, rapt. 

"Like this," he said, and he drew up a pretend microphone with his paws. "Excuse me, Officer Hopps. Can you explain why predators are going savage?" 

He pivoted, lowering his knees and his ears to make it clear this was how _she_ should answer. "Well, _are_ there predators going savage? Yes, yes, that's as much as we know. You see."

She exhaled, turning her head to keep the smoke from blowing into his face. "I wish you could be up there with me."

"Just don't let them get to you."

Her smile was wry. She passed back the cigarette, and although his paws were a spasming mess she managed not to burn either of them. 

She took in a deep breath. He watched her shoulders straighten.

"OK," she said. "I feel better."

Nick was afraid to put the cigarette in his mouth, because he knew it would be fleeting. At the same time, he was afraid to push. The more often he insisted on something, the less likely she seemed to believe him.

He touched the filter to his lips, succumbed to the drag.

Not long enough, it felt like snow. "Judy," he said with the exhale.

Her eyes widened like she'd seen an alien or something. He frowned, trying to get her to realize this was important. "Do you—"

There was a cough from behind, and he managed not to freeze up. Sheep, and only the smoke had kept him from smelling it.

Do you have questions, do you _get it_ , do you understand what I'm telling you, and he could say all he wanted in his mind, but she wasn't looking at him any longer.

Tossing the cigarette to the ground, he turned like he was grateful for the interruption.

"Officer Hopps?" said Dawn. "You should come inside."

She stood at the door, shoulders drooped like she wanted to curtsey. The bell of her necklace was still, and he wondered that he hadn't heard it. She pushed her glasses up her nose, and looked at him, and he was surprised to see accusation.

He opened his mouth to say something harmless and friendly, but the look on her face forbade it.

"Of course," said Judy.

Dawn smiled at her and they turned to go inside. He would follow in a moment, but something made him look out at the steps. It was going to be a very hot day. Somewhere beyond the grave, his grandmother would be making chowder, like she'd always done on days like this.

He could hurl.

*

Bellwether took her by the elbow, drawing her into the precinct like they were dance partners. She'd barely spared a glance for Nick this time. The professionalism was welcome. This close, Judy could smell grass, and sod, and something faintly like ammonia salts. More striking were the sounds she made with her bell and her wool and her clicking hooves—

"We're so proud of you, Officer Hopps."

—because it reminded Judy of Sharla. The way Bellwether held her now, she could almost be Sharla in reverse, leading instead of following Judy as they'd snuck down the steep decline into the border lands, into wilderness and adventure just shy of fox territory. 

"Thank you, I—"

"Now, when you go up there, I want you to tell it exactly as you see it, alright? This is _your_ moment, you know?"

"This isn't about me."

Bellwether blinked behind her glasses, the other hoof rising to adjust them. She turned in towards Judy with a smile. "Well, of course not. You're so right. I guess I was just thinking about all the viewers at home, what this might mean for them, seeing you up there proving all those damaging stereotypes wrong."

"We might be little, but the job gets done?"

"Oh—good one!" A giggle, like something startled out of her. "See, you're a role model already."

Judy glanced over at Nick, walking beside them at a discretionary distance. He was smiling without his eyes, and she found herself doing a double-take.

Something was bothering him. His ears were lying flat in a way that reminded her of an old movie about soldiers climbing out of a trench on their bellies. The black tips gleamed like metal, and she could picture rifles and bayonets snaking out from muddy chests.

Flattery, she thought. Bellwether was flattering her a _lot_.

Maybe he was telling her to return the favor. She adjusted her focus to overlarge glasses. "Thank you. But I'm not the only role model here." 

Bellwether seemed to hesitate, and Judy put on her kindest smile. She got a wobbly one in return, then a laugh, deeper and more interesting than the giggle. Like she'd struck a hidden chord, one that matched the strange song of swishing dress and ringing bell and crinkling wool.

"You're so sweet." The way hard fingers lingered on Judy's elbow, and suddenly Bellwether wasn't like Sharla at all. 

Judy's ears were warm. 

"Well, I'll leave you here," said Bellwether. 

She withdrew with a breathy laugh. A little wave, a flip of skirt, and her bell sounded like a whale under the sea. "Good luck!"

"May the wolf choke."

Judy managed not to choke, but it was a close call. She turned to Nick and saw his benign smile, and something beneath it with an edge.

"Excuse me?"

"Variation on 'break a leg'," Nick said. 

His eyes were tracking Bellwether's progress. Judy felt the click of understanding. No wonder she felt nauseous. Some superstitions you never got over, apparently, even years after quitting theatre club.

She was still hyperaware of her ears. She didn't like this part of herself.

"That's not very nice to wolves," she said. "Oh! I nearly forgot. This is for you."

The satchel in her belt was just the distraction she needed. She really hoped Nick liked his gift, carrot-studded satchel notwithstanding. The paper store hadn't opened in time for her to buy a proper gift bag, so she'd used what she had.

His brows came down; his tail lurched. "It's a present," she said, and now she was becoming really nervous.

From her periphery, she could see Chief Bogo moving to the podium to speak. She should've done this earlier.

Nick took the satchel with a caution that reminded her of an earlier risk. The first time (of the pawful of times) she'd smoked a cigarette had been on a sibling dare. Jamie, Jason, Bree—they'd all found it _hilarious_ when she'd forgotten that the butt was hot and accidentally scorched herself.

He seemed to think the satchel was that cigarette. She smiled, even though the instinct to bounce away the nervousness had taken over, lifting to her toes. "You can open it now, if you want," she said.

She looked at his mouth, rising into a smirk. "Am I gonna pull out a rabbit?"

Please don't draw this out.

The pack of Nesterfields came out first. Judy had been positive she'd gotten the right kind, but Nick rolled his eyes, making her question herself.

"Carrots—"

"There's something else."

He seemed hellbent on doing everything slow, like he'd forgotten she was about to go onstage and was sinking in enough doubt without having to wonder if he liked his present.

The carrot pen almost fell out of his fingers. Not on purpose, she thought—his paws were very unsteady today.

She watched his smirk fade. "It's a recording pen," she explained. "I left you a message for later. Don't listen to it now. And it works as an ordinary pen too."

She'd expected a carrot joke. A token complaint. Something about her leading him on, carrot-and-stick, or her poor taste. 

He said nothing.

Waiting for words, seeing him stare at the pen with unreadable blankness, she found herself embarrassed. She'd packed it as a kind of apology, but what if he didn't recognize it for what it was? What if he was so put off by the garishness that he never used it, never thought of their friendship? What if he found the whole conceit _presumptuous_? 

"It means a lot to me that you were here," she said, and finally she got a response: a look, half-lidded like he was still confused. 

He opened his suit jacket and slid the pen into the pocket over his heart. She waited with the dread of knowing that any second now, she would be pulled over the waterfall.

"Thanks, Judy," he said. 

*

—couldn't even knot his stupid tie and she'd returned the car reported to duty made the time to buy him replacement cigarettes why carrots why

Sport remember what I told you about the true measure of a mammal watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals Dad was onto something Dad would've loved her good old dead Dad so much they'd all forget about spoiled potential and kits the vomited eggs and chowder the disgust of eggs and hurled chowder and Ma would take him aside look him in the eye you have a friend like that then something went right afterall

Dearly departed something's defective no with this pen I give you my promise no that's mixing it up he's mixed up in the head wish you were here Dad would've known what to say you ever see anything like this before, squirt? a pen shaped like a carrot and it takes recordings now isn't that something gotta love it, l o v e

_say something you fool_

ears falling down her head avalanches snow on savaged earth he's _mixed_ great going all he's got is her name i know you're not a joke i know you're a sign like a tug into the night sky planets rising inscrutable through purple trees—

*

So it hadn't been a fluke of her imagination. He did know her name.

The fact that he remembered was astonishing. _She_ didn't even remember giving him her full name, but she must've done way back at the beginning—and how many other tiny details from ancient history had he stored?

She looked at his eyes and saw a smile building. She wondered if this was an attempt to wound or mock. She looked at his lips and couldn't find the curves of malice or scorn. He wasn't leering, either. 

She looked at his eyes and found a story—lids at half-mast, veins unfurling like ivy around lumps of green glass. The incline beneath, puffy as soil after a saturating rain, and he was tired. She looked at his lips and saw forgiveness. 

_Real_ forgiveness. 

Apology accepted, she thought with the sense of a fan unfolding. Leaves greeting the morning light, chlorophyll dance, and she'd done him right, and she was proud.

Suddenly her ears twisted; she was back in the rushing water, desperate to avoid colliding with the rocks.

"Officer Hopps? It's time."

That smile. It would have to be her raft.

*

Dawn glanced at him with open curiosity. 

There was an ache in his back, and he considered sitting down. She'd led them to an alcove near some unoccupied benches to the side of the podium; there was plenty of space for him to sprawl out.

No, he wasn't sitting down for this. Standing, Judy could still see him. Standing, he could see her as well as the press.

The press . . .

It was ironic, he thought, watching them jostle each other for good spots as she climbed the podium. Nearly all the reporters were prey animals. Gather them all together in one room, though, and they started acting like wolves.

They certainly went after her like a pack.

"Officer Hopps!"  
"Over here!"  
"Officer Hopps!"  
"Here, over _here_!"

She pointed at someone too small for Nick to make out. "Yes?"

"What can you tell us about the animals that went savage?"

At least she'd seen this one coming.

"Well, the, uh . . ."

Or not.

He felt dread swoop as she turned to him. ". . . t-the animals in question, um . . ."

She'd blanked on his lesson already. Later, he'd regret ever lighting that cigarette. Less time smoking and more time coaching, and his advice might've stuck better.

But the way she was looking at him then, it resembled a fantasy called trust. That was a thrill, and he thought: we've got this.

Encouragement came easy. He projected the calm he didn't feel, rotating his paw like they were back outside, rehearsing her lines, like all she had to do was reel in the fishing rope of memory to find them.

Her ears perked. _Oh_ , she mouthed.

With her eyes still on him, her body turned towards the crowd. "Are they all different species?"

Something sprang inside him, heat sliding up the back of his skull. He was a six-year-old in the bath again, and his mother was washing his fur.

"Yes," she said, "yes, they are."

Her eyes darted back to him and him alone, and he thought—we've really got this. Warmth had claimed the entirety of his skull. He could feel himself smiling. 

He gave her a thumbs-up. She gave him the flicker of a smile.

"OK, so what _is_ the connection?"

"Uh. . ."

She blinked too many times, retreating into a state of unseeing. "All we know is that they . . ." Seeing. "The _victims_ are all members of the predator family."

Shawn Woolessey stepped up. "So predators are the only ones going savage?"

(Nick didn't have political views. He wasn't one of _those_ foxes. Politics bored him, honestly. If he changed the channel when Sheep News was on in the office or the gym, it wasn't because he was bothered by what Woolessey and the other anchors were saying. He was just creeped out by the way sheep moved their eyes.)

Nick felt his muzzle tighten.

Her eyes told him the worst. Woolessey had spoken before she was ready to move on—if life were a comic, he'd have interrupted her speech bubble—and Nick knew: they were back to square one.

He lifted his wrist and circled it, trying to catch her eye.

She took in a deep breath. "I'm sorry, can you rephrase the question?"

"All the savage animals are predators, right?"

"Yes, b—"

"So predators _are_ the only ones going savage." Woolessey lowered his mike, stepping back in satisfaction. 

There was a collective murmur; several reporters bent down over notebooks to scribble furiously.

Her nose began twitching pretty furiously too. Nick felt his tail lurch.

"I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't put it like that—"

The clamor of attention-seekers, drowning her out. Flummoxed, she pointed at someone Nick couldn't see.

"Why is this happening?"

"We, we don't know."

"Can you say more about the biological connection?"

"No. At this point, we're talking about mere coincidence—" 

She was drowned out again. Nick closed his eyes and told himself: all things considered, she was doing fine.

"Over here, over here!"

He opened his eyes and saw that the reporters kept glancing at something behind her. Light threaded through the air in a pale stream, turning dust into floating gold. Nick followed its trail until his eyes fell on a projector hanging from the ceiling.

Right. A slide show.

"Yes?"

He had to walk in a curve to see it. The photographs were ones _she'd_ taken, he realized: the angle corresponded to her height. Hospital equipment. Glowing brain scans, implied to be abnormal.

"What if more predators go savage?"

Strutting with its teeth, eyes white with shine: the savage tiger in its cage. Nick remembered feeling like a grasshopper. The shadows had been purple and green and he'd seen the traces first, deep like a massive weight had been dragged; he'd imagined the size of the claws responsible, and his heart had recognized—

"First off, there is no way to know it'll happen again, let alone whether this _only_ affects predators—"

—the truth. Fox, rabbit, it wouldn't matter to these beasts.

"Officer Hopps!"

Tiger, dread tiger

"Are you saying this could also happen to prey?"

no art twisted that fearful heart, and Nick was mixed, burning

"I'm _saying_ that it's too early to rule out any possibilities."

No, he was actually fine. Look at that. New slide. Four shots, four savages. That's some fine symmetry you've got going there, Carrots. Look at them, the monsters. Creatures of forest and savanna, salivating, feral, 

collared, leashed, 

muzzled like

trust a fox without a muzzle, you're even dumber than  _dumb_  you look  
what did I do  _dumb_  wrong you guys  
go home fox scum  _nothome_  
guys i'll be  _off_  good

like we're gonna believe that fox what a baby  _nothome_

i'll be good i'll be good!  
repeating something doesn't make it true good one zach  
aw is he gonna cry shut up  
please i'll be good  
beat it loser art you're gonna have to carry it  
i said _all_ of you, _shut up_

_ill be so good_

now  
i'm listening to you, fox.  
maybe i'll even give you a second chance.  
what do you mean,  
you'll be _good_?

i mean  
chuck he's just gonna lie _shut up ed_  
i'll-i'll-i'll  
brave loyal helpful are you seriously buying  
or-or whatever you want 

". . . prepared and here to protect you."

Nick realized that he'd zoned out.

It was louder than before, he realized. He was sweating through his paw-pads and so were the reporters—the air was rank—there was a haziness to the light like waking after a concussion. He hadn't fallen yet but he could picture it, fainting here right before the lot of them stampeded over his body.

Behind her, more savages, framing the question of how lambs and tigers could co-exist. He glanced at Dawn and saw an expression as still as the sea without wind. 

"Have you considered that predator biology might be the reason this is happening?"

He looked at Judy and saw her eyes, round as plums. "You know," she said, "before we all start jumping to premature conclusions about predators, let's just take a—a _deep_ breath and think about how that _sounds_. The victims could have been targeted for a _number_ of different reasons, and—"

" _Targeted?_ Can you elaborate on that please?"

Shit. 

"Well, what seems more likely to you?"

Shit shit _shit_

"That animals are going savage, something that hasn't happened since the _dark ages_? Or—that someone is targeting them to make it _appear_ that way?"

She was holding out her paws like the cups of a balance—unbalancing him, because _fuck_ she was channeling him it was painfully obvious everyone would blame him this was it betrayal was coursing through him he wanted pounce strike 

teartheplumsapart

Calm down, Wilde. 

Dawn was already on her way to end this farce. Whatever happened now, it wasn't in his paws any longer.

Carrots, you _traitor_ —think, Wilde, think—too many camera men at the main entrance, nope, he didn't want to end up in some tabloid— 

Back exit?

The Traitor was looking at Dawn with surprise. She was distracted, which was what mattered. If he was quick, he could steal away before either of them noticed.

Sounded like a plan.

*

these changes  
ain't changing me  
the cold-hearted boy i used to be

*

Judy looked for her raft. She looked and looked until she found a suspended black trail.

His tail, vanishing like soot into wind. 

"Hopps, what are you—"

"One second, Chief!"

"Hopps! We're not done here!"

Fear. Treachery. 

Loss.

*

"Why are you following me?"

"Where are you _going_?"

"Somewhere as far away from you as possible. It's called abandoning ship, if you didn't know. _This_? This was a waste of time. I'm out."

"What? N-no, you don't mean that—"

"Can you do us both a favor and not make a scene? Honestly, I don't know why you're surprised, Carrots, this was never going to work out—"

"Work _out_? Nick, you're my best friend—don't run—why are you _running_?"

"Why'd you run your _mouth_?"

"Look, I know I said some things you didn't like—"

"Didn't _like_? Who said anything about liking, rabbit, I thought you believed in me—"

"I _do_ believe in you, Nick, with all my heart—"

"—might as well be some dumb _kit_ for all you were willing to listen—"

"—and I did listen, but this was _necessary_ , we can't let the public think—can you _slow down_ , I'm trying to talk to you—"

"Clearly I don't _want_ to talk to you, so if you could kindly _fuck off_ —"

"I did the right thing!"

"The right thing, was it? Speculating on television, stirring up panic and controversy, of course there's a way to put the right spin on that in _your_ mind— _don't touch me!_ "

offoffoff that awful catch in his throat aw is he gonna    cry

repellant this is my gun  
there's nowhere to run  
you're the traitor babe and i'm

"Nick."

lost come closer see if my trigger can  
depress we're next in line we're next

"Please."

ugly spiders hold on aim for lost this wasn't the plan  
nowhere but down nowhere but hell

"Don't do this."

do this you _threw me to the wolves_ i'm gonna be sick put it away son that awfulcatch i'll be good swear you make me sicksicksick

made me promise to run and  
_run_ you dumb bunny can't you hear  
the bells they're bellowing like

"Officer Hopps?"

bulls

" _There_ you are. Chief Bogo's been looking everywhere for you."

"Thank you, I'll be right there—"

peppers in his pocket all he'd wanted was to run

"You might want to hurry, Judy. It seemed urgent, and—oh, I didn't see you there, Nicky. I wanted to talk to you, actually—" 

"Assistant Mayor Bellwether, if you could just give us a moment, please?"

how dare she sound like tears  
how dare she look like plums bursting falling from trees  
how dare she treat him like a child she was supposed to believe in him

No. No, she'd never believed in him. Her actions proved it.

"We can talk now," he was able to tell Dawn. "I'm done here."

"Oh, good—"

"I'm not," said The Traitor. "Nick, I'll call you later, OK?"

go on make it worse to the _wolves_ why don't you i hate you hate you h a t e y o u

"Bye now," he said, and his lips were stretched to their seams, and his throat was hoarse with building screams, and his fur was a pelt that was about to slide off his body into a dead heap.

"I'll call you later," she said ugly with tears in her eyes he sneered and turned I h a t e y o u 

*

what did you say, fox?  
whatever you want whatever you want  
swear it packhome  
i swear  
forever and ever and ever?  
yes yes  yes!

*

Funeral bells and he was out in the sun the day was hot and he couldn't do this right now not with Dawn he was sick he was sick he needed

"What happened?"

a bath and a cigarette and 

"It wasn't my fault."

"I believe you."

she was following him and he wouldn't stop her, he knew what this meant he could guess what she'd seen and good thing Arthur was waiting after all Nick slid in first and she slipped in beside him and ZNN was on in the dashboard television so Arthur had seen it all. 

He was gonna be sick

"Turn that off, please," said Dawn.

Arthur smirked the bastard 

but he obeyed even tipped his purple hat. 

Dumbass not that Dawn cared she wasn't even looking that's right you don't matter at all fatso and

"Nicky, did she threaten you? Why did you pull out pepper spray?"

fox repellant, so she'd been watching the whole time you dumb bunny look what you're making me do

"She's crazy. She wouldn't listen, she wouldn't listen to me—"

"Nicky, I can see you're upset," she said. "I know it's difficult, but I need you to start from the beginning so I can understand."

She touched her hoof to his arm and he leaned in because that was what she wanted because it was a cure for the sick he never cried never he wasn't crying his eyes were dry why did it fee

"Can you do that for me?"

Sure. 

He never let them get to him. See? he wasn't leaning in for comfort. He wasn't a child. He was leaning in to leer. 

Now he was looking into her eyes. Green like split fruit and crushed worms,

"Now, the beginning. You were there with Judy, you saw what she saw . . ."

green like the creature he was, deep down inside. "I saw a bunch of savages in a mental asylum, exactly where they belonged."

Green like fear, green like the tent at night, when darkness filtered through the tarp and the shadows were stolen for leashed sex. Green like his sickness, like the breaker of plums, like the eater of plums.

"What on earth made her think they were being _targeted_?"

He was good but he was a fox. He was good but he'd tear into plums and suck them dry and toss the skins away to moulder in the shadows. He was good when he was bad, he was smart when he was dumb, and she must've really thought he was dumb or she'd have _listened_ and none of this would be happening.

"Something Lionheart said."

Lying embraced him like a cloak around his naked form, a garment of dignity. He watched Dawn's brows knit a thick line behind her glasses, her mouth curl with scorn.

"Anyway," he said, relishing the warmth her anger gave him, a lie pulled off well, "I told the rabbit he was just trying to save his own skin, but—"

"She didn't believe you."

Toss the plums. Break them. Stomp on them in the planet-light, the moon-light, tear into the bruised skins with teeth.

"It's not my fault she's got a seriously demented way of thinking!"

"Oh?"

When she smiled like that, full of derision, he was reminded he was despicable.

He ran his paws over his ears, because there was heat gathering at the tips and he needed to dispel it. "Yeah," he said. "Thinks everything is a conspiracy. She'd lock up half the city if she had the chance."

"Oh, Nicky," said Dawn. There something like weariness to her tone, like this was not something she'd anticipated having to do.

She shifted, cotton sliding against pleather. "You really think she might just be, ah, how to put this delicately—"

"Unstable?"

"Well," said Dawn with a careful cough. "I didn't want to say it. But . . . you're sure?"

This could be a grave mistake. A mistake could bury them both. But he wasn't the traitor. He was on his own now, and he could only act in his best interests.

"Absolutely," he said. "I am absolutely, positively sure that bunny is in some desperate need of help."

Gather the plums into his teeth. Hurl them to the shadows.

"It's so _sad_ ," said Dawn, voice breaking a little on the word. "She's been such an amazing role model for us little guys. I was really looking forward to having her on my team."

She pushed her glasses up her nose. "But with this on top of that reckless _scurry_ , the way she nearly destroyed Little Rodentia—" 

Nick didn't know anything about the near-destruction of Little Rodentia, but he did remember Mr. Big's daughter. Carrots had saved her from a flying doughnut or something. That reckless escapade was the only reason Nick hadn't been iced.

He'd spent a lot of time considering what would happen to him. Somehow he'd never really gotten around to considering what would happen to her.

She was prey, no-one would try to kill her. Unless—

"—it looks like there need to be some serious questions raised about her fitness for the job. If she strikes out again, a suspension might be in order."

"A suspension?"

That couldn't be so bad.

For her. For him, not so much. Big _loved_ Carrots, Carrots was the only reason goons hadn't turned up to finish what they'd started, and if word ever got to him that Nick was behind her _suspension_? 

"Not right away, of course," said Dawn. 

He felt his heart the way his bones would feel a stampede.

"Maybe it won't even be necessary. She was acting from the best impulses, you know. It's commendable, really. No-one could accuse her of bias. That's not something you can say about many police officers these days . . ."

Could things get any worse? Suspended, Carrots would've at least been out of the way. Safe. Publicly humiliated, angry and miserable, but safe. 

(plums tossed the shadows, where they'd lie still and concealed from other eyes)

And now Dawn seemed to think she would come _around_?

Sure, they had a certain chemistry, he'd seen it himself, it had frightened him actually, but chemistry was never enough with Carrots. She'd realize the truth. She'd accuse Dawn of masterminding the whole charade, and then—

Stay calm. This was _her fault_ this was her grave to lie in, and if he'd thrown them both into a volcano for fear of a little ice and the shame, oh the _shame_ make me hurl make me small

Little strokes to his arm. Tugs that reached the roots.

Bile stirred, and so did his awareness to words. ". . . and I'm not blaming you, Nicky, but you _are_ a predator, and this has been such an emotional time for you, and—well, I'm not surprised you had a misunderstanding, you know?"

Shame overcame him like a rancid black hood. Spiders crawled up his legs, a shiver she could see.

"This must be hard for you."

"What?"

He swatted them with his tail. Dawn cocked her head like a curious bird. "I know how much you like her."

"I thought she was a friend," he said.

He pulled away from her touch, uneasy with the weight of his own admission, and looked out the window. Traffic passed as it always did, as though this were an ordinary day, as though his grandmother were out there, stirring clams into a chowder. "Obviously I was wrong."

"Oh, Nicky, I saw the way you looked at her. Like a schoolboy with a crush."

No, no, that was just a trick of the light, he wanted to say, except that there were bubbles starting to prickle under his skin. Bubbles like hot gases popping beneath the layer of fat, like he'd been skewered on a spit and would soon be roasted to the bones.

That catch in his throat, and he was being swept down the pipe again, watching his life join the rushing of waste. He was paddling in water too soft against his paws, surrounded by noise and feeling like it was the most oppressive silence. All of him was rushing out in slimy rivulets from the hole the silence had made, the pus of his self was dribbling down to the spiders, the spider-gases bubbling beneath his skin and boiling in readiness to drink him down to his shell. 

"I hate her right now," he said.

Dawn clucked her tongue. "That's the stress talking," she said. "I told you, there's no reason to give up on her yet."

She was waiting for him to say something. He thought about saying: if you want me to talk to her again, I'll do it. 

But that was the trap, wasn't it. 

She patted his arm. He could hear her smile; he wanted to curl over a toilet and hurl. "Now, I think I need to go have a long conversation with Chief Bogo. Thank you for being so candid with me, Nicky."

"Boss wants a call," said Arthur.

Nick wasn't even looking, and he could tell she was pursing her lips. "He'll get one soon enough."

Caress of his tail, pulling against the grain of the fur, and the bubbles became a burn in his cheeks, like that time when he'd pulled a chili pepper from the plant and then rubbed his eyes. A taste of his own medicine, and with her fingers still tugging his tail, she leaned forward to plant a peck on his cheek. 

"Come visit me soon," she whispered.

"Yeah."

He should turn and give her a proper smile. He should turn and acknowledge her power over the girl he hated and loved. He should turn, change his story and make himself the sacrifice, make it his fault, because her necklace was ringing with warning, because she was exiting the car, and if he didn't act, she would take Judy with her.

Love was powerlessness, he thought as the door thudded shut. Love was a mistake. Love was—

"Knew you'd screw things up."

Nick welcomed the flood of anger. It washed everything else away. 

"Shut up and drive," he said.

Later, he'd realize he'd showed another scout his claws and fangs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The descriptions of the savage tiger paraphrase William Blake ("The Tyger"). "The bells are the bellowings of bulls" is a line from Wallace Stevens' "The Man with the Blue Guitar" that I here butcher for no good reason. The "measure of a man" quotation is from J. K. Rowling. The "changes ain't changing me" line is from the Killers ("All These Things That I've Done", also the source of this story's title and lots of individual words). Gary Synder ("Here", "The Rabbit") was the inspiration for some of the spacing and imagery (planets). Virginia Woolf is everywhere and nowhere, particularly in Judy's opener, which also references the lamp in Stevens' "Emperor of Ice Cream". Woolf, Synder and Stevens all love green and purple, for some reason. Plums are a nod to Brecht ("Erinnerung an Marie A").
> 
> Any hints of the Bellhoppian variety are entirely due to this mind-altering [drabble](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7899952/chapters/18045532) by dizzy_dim. The idea of Nick betraying Judy came to me from Flipside_Remix's extraordinary story [Wilde's Card](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6961042/chapters/15870166) \- the best, my inspiration and my heart.

**Author's Note:**

> The text hasn't been beta-read. Feel free to point out errors in the comments, I'll do my best to fix them quickly. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. Thank you for reading!


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